Desenvolvimento de um programa computacional dinâmico para simulação de secagem de grãos e sementes.

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to implement a dynamic computational program for the simulation of drying of agricultural products. To this effect, the Thompson's model as applied to a fixed-bed drier was used with the equations of Equilibrium Moisture Content, as proposed by Henderson, Cavalcanti Mata, Oswin and Thompson, and the equations of a fine layer, which were used and proposed by Page and Thompson. Moreo ver, the approach developed herein allows the use of any previously defined parameters, from collected experimental data, observing the temperature bandwidth and the initial moisture content of the product. To achieve such an objective, the concept of Relational Database was used. It allows to increase the number of practical applications due to its ability to create a product database, which stores individual parametric targets and particular conditions of drying, giving to each product a unique characteristic. Although similar softwares, which make use of some subset of equations used herein, such as Reason of Conversion, Specifíc Heat, Heat of Vaporization, Equilibrium Moisture Content Equation and Thin Layer Equation, have been developed, they do not couple with the set of parameter characterization for each product. As a functional extension to the application of the software, the user identification can also be stored along with the characteristics of the product in analysis and the simulated dataset. It is also possible to export the required data to perform a posteriori simulation experiments. This dynamic procedure is quite efficient when one desires to make reuse or to perform new analysis of stored dataset, since ali the required information will be appropriately available, reducing error prone to repetitive actions.