Three dimensional modeling on airflow, heat and mass transfer in partially impermeable enclosure containing agricultural produce during natural convective cooling

A three dimensional model was developed to simulate the transport phenomena in heat and mass generating porous medium cooled under natural convective environment. Unlike the previous works on this aspect, the present model was aimed for bulk stored agricultural produce contained in a permeable package placed on a hard surface. This situation made the bottom of the package impermeable to fluid flow as well as moisture transfer and adiabatic to heat transfer. The velocity vectors, isotherms and contours of rate of moisture loss were presented during transient cooling as well as at steady state using the commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code based on the finite volume technique. The CFD model was validated using the experimental data on the time–temperature history as well as weight loss obtained from a bag of potatoes kept in a cold store. The simulated and experimental values on temperature and moisture loss of the product were found to be in good agreement.