Experimental study and analysis of porous thin plate drying in a convection dryer

In this study experiments were conducted to study the porous thin plate drying process. An analysis was also carried out to determine the moisture transfer coefficients that vary with the moisture content of the plate during drying. The study is useful for analyzing the transient drying process of porous thin plates. Furthermore, energy and exergetic analyses based on the measured results were carried out to determine the dryer performance. It is found that, although the drying rate increases, the energy utilization ratio of the drying process decreases with either an increase in the rate of air flow or an increase in the size of the drying air inlet. The results indicate that a significant amount of the energy provided to the system was lost and not utilized for drying, especially for high drying rate dryers. An exergetic analysis showed that by adjusting the configuration of the air inlet and flow rate, the exergetic efficiency of the dryer can be significantly increased (from 0.5% to 10%). An overall transport phenomena analysis and performance evaluation including the transient moisture transfer coefficients, drying rate, energy utilization ratio, and exergetic efficiency in the current study provide comprehensive and important insights to the thermal physics of porous thin plate drying processes and the design of efficient dryer systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.