A Feasibility Study And The Design Of A Waste Heat Utilised Cloth Drier For Household Application

Fatimah Al Zahrah, Mohd Sa'at and Nor Azmmi, Masripan (2009) A Feasibility Study And The Design Of A Waste Heat Utilised Cloth Drier For Household Application. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Nowadays in developed countries. the application of residential air conditio ning (RAC) has increased and without recycling the consumption of heat from the RAC it can be wasted. An innovation had been made to use the recycle heat to make something useful for our daily life. One of the solutions is to prove that the emission of heat is useful in clothes drying process. In this project, an experimental study had been conducted to the cloth dryer using waste heat from a split type air conditioner with a capacity of 2 horse power. The drying chamber was constructed by a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in a size of a normal wardrobe. Arcrylic had been used for some part of the drying chamber for visualization purposes. Then it was co nnected to the condensing unit of an air conditioner through a duct. A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation and analys is of the clothes drying was done to predict the behavior of drying process inside the chamber. The performance of the drying cabinet is analyzed by observing on the hot air flow and temperature distribution inside the cabinet. The wet fabric drying mode l is developed by recasting the governing equations of the porous medium into the Fluent so lver using the user defmed function. Validation is performed by comparing the results with the available published data. The simulation result and fabric model developed was found able to predict the total drying time required for the fabric to be dried to equilibrium condition with percentage errors of 1.3 % and 2.4 % for given conditions. The experimental study shows that dying is faster when using waste-heat utilized cloth drier. A heat loss was detected during heat transfer through the duct connecting the drying cabinet and the air-conditioner outdoor unit. An extension study on the ducting should be carried out to solve the problem. The simulation result shows the distribution of temperature and air flow inside the cabinet. This result suggests that an optimization study should be carried out regarding the size and shape of the cabinet. Improving the air c irculation is important to develop a more efficient system.

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