Amol Kalambe

 

Abstract of Masters Thesis:

EXPERIMENTAL AND MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED DRYERS

The versatility of fluidization technology has resulted in its extensive use in industry for cost effective drying of a wide range of solids. In fluidized bed dryer, rapid mixing of solid leads to nearly isothermal conditions throughout the bed, and thus reliable control of drying process. It has been confirmed by various investigations that the moisture content of the particle and temperature in a batch fluidized bed dryer are almost uniform through out the bed.

The present work deals with performing drying of Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) in a batch fluidized bed dryer. The effect of operating conditions such as mass loading, air inlet velocity, and air inlet temperature on drying kinetics was estimated. The page model was used to fit the kinetic data. The batch drying kinetic data was used to scale up the plug flow fluidized bed dryer. The objective of the present study was to develop a practical mathematical model for the case of plug flow fluidized bed dryer that can be further designed and its performance evaluated under given set of operating conditions. The mathematical analysis was done using MATLAB 7.0. The model output include profiles of moisture content, bed temperature, exit air temperature, exit air humidity and specific energy consumption along the length of dryer. The effect of operating parameters such as air inlet temperature, solid inlet temperature, air inlet velocity and height of static bed was studied.