Simultaneous Heat and Moisture Transfer Investigation for a Packed Agricultural Particle Pile Bed

As one kind of hygroscopic salts, bulk potash particle easily absorbs water vapor during storage and transportation process to form serious caking. The accumulation and movement of moisture is demonstrated to change with temperature. In this paper, a set of appropriate equations has been presented to formulate a mathematical model of coupled moisture and heat migration in thin pile beds of storage potash particle, assuming moisture diffusion and heat conduction as dominant transport mechanism. The numerical model is validated by comparison of numerical simulation results with experimental data from literature. Then the model is used as a reliable predictive tool to explore the moisture and heat migration for a packed potash bed with average particle size 3.66mm. The sensitivity analysis presents the influence of the variation of effective thermal conductivity and effective diffusion coefficient.