Energy consumption and quality aspect by intermittent drying

The aim of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of intermittent drying with respect to drying time, energy consumption, and quality of dried samples. By intermittent drying is meant here the convective drying with periodically changing both the temperature and the humidity of drying air. The cylindrically shaped kaolin samples were used for tests in these studies. The acoustic emission (AE) method was applied to monitor on line the development of material fracture for the purpose of detection of the material crack commencement, and thus to establish the moment at which the changes of drying conditions should be initiated. The kinetics of drying, the consumption of energy, and the quality of the dried samples were examined. It was shown that drying at intermittent conditions leads to products of much better quality than drying at stationary conditions by almost the same duration of these processes. The energy consumption was smaller by intermittent drying realized with variable air temperature and greater by variable air humidity in comparison to drying at stationary conditions. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.