Drying of rubber wood sawdust using tray dryer

The present study attempts to understand drying characteristics of rubber wood sawdust in a tray dryer as it is the simplest and oldest of the dryers known commercially. An increase in temperature, flow rate of the heating medium, and initial moisture content was found to increase the drying rate. However, an increase in the particle diameter and bed height was found to reduce the drying rate. The increase in drying rate with temperature and moisture content was attributed to increase in the diffusion coefficient, while the increase due to the flow rate is attributed to reduction in the external mass transfer resistance during early stages of drying while the drying rate was high. An increase in bed height as well as particle size increases the diffusion path length for moisture, which contributes to the reduction in drying rate. The experimental data were modeled using Fick's diffusion equation, and the effective diffusivity coefficient was evaluated by minimizing the error between the experimental data and the prediction using the model equation. The effective diffusion coefficient was found to increase with increase in temperature, initial moisture content, and the flow rate of the heating medium, while it was found to decrease with increase in particle size. The diffusion coefficient was not found to vary with the bed height/solid loading. The effective diffusion coefficient was found to vary within 9.1 × 10^-9 to 22 × 10^-9 m²/min. The standard deviation of error between the experimental data and prediction using the model, using the estimated effective diffusivity coefficient, was found to be less than 0.07 for the entire set of data, indicating the appropriateness of the model in predicting drying kinetics.