Researchers from Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania have developed a new method to estimate the drying rate of biomass, which could have significant implications for the heat and power generation sector. The team, led by Gediminas Skarbalius, has proposed a fully predictive approach to evaluate the convective drying rate of deep fixed porous material beds containing any type of evaporating liquid.
The new method is based on iteratively solving the heat power conservation equation, which allows for the estimation of drying rates during the constant-rate drying period. The researchers found that the drying rate of a deep fixed moist porous material bed is a linear function of the inlet air mass flow rate and is independent of the initial masses of water and dry material inside the bed when inlet air absolute humidity is constant. This means that the drying rate can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy based on the inlet air conditions alone.
The proposed method also estimates the theoretical maximum possible drying rate for a drying system with given inlet air conditions. This makes it a valuable tool for designing industrial equipment and verifying the correctness of drying experiments. The researchers believe that their method could be used to improve the efficiency of biomass conversion in the heat and power generation sector, which is an important technological solution for increasing the quality of biomass.
The research was published in the journal Drying Technology, and the team hopes that their findings will be of interest to engineers and researchers working in the field of biomass conversion and drying technology. The new method is fully predictive and can be used to estimate the drying rate of biomass with a high degree of accuracy, which could lead to significant improvements in the efficiency of biomass conversion processes.
This article is based on research available at arXiv.