A detailed investigation of the temperature-controlled fluidized bed solar dryer: A numerical, experimental, and modeling study

Abstract Solar thermal systems are generally utilized for providing sustainable and environmentally friendly thermal energy that can be used in different applications. In the present study, a temperature-controlled fluidized bed solar drying system along with flat plate and plate with zigzag fins has been designed, manufactured, and experimentally tested. In the first step, the thermal behavior of designed solar air collectors has been numerically modeled. In the next step, the drying system’s performance has been experimentally investigated. The overall efficiency of the system was found to be 64%. The maximum exergy efficiency of flat and zigzag plate solar air collectors was calculated as 7.2% and 11.6%, respectively. Then moisture content (MC) and moisture ratio (MR) values were modelled by response surface methodology (RSM), and the predicted results were compared with four metrics. It was found that the drying parameters were highly fitted with the mathematical models. MC metric was predicted with accurate values for performance criteria of R2, R-RMSE, and MBE as 0.9995, 1.94%, and −0.0096, respectively. The general outcomes of numerical, experimental and modeling analyses of this research exhibited successfulness of the developed the fluidized bed solar drying system.