Field drying trials were conducted using both field baskets as well as grab sampling techniques to study drying behaviour of switchgrass and maize (corn) stover (CS). Environmental conditions such as hourly solar radiation, vapour pressure deficit (VPD), average wind speed, rainfall amount, harvesting method, and field operations such as swath density were used as variables for model developmen...

We develop a mathematical model for the drying of porous media in the presence of gravity. The model incorporates effects of corner flow through macroscopic liquid films that form in the cavities of pore walls, mass transfer by diffusion in the dry regions of the medium, external mass transfer over the surface, and the effect of gravity. We consider two different cases: when gravity opposes liq...

Mechanisms of shrinkage and the conditions leading to cracking of drying soils are addressed. An elastic formulation of the hydro-mechanical drying problem is presented. It relies on the analogy which can be drawn between the desiccation process and thermo-elasticity. The validity of the analogy is discussed in the light of finite element simulations of air drying experiments on a rectangular s...

In this work, internal moisture profiles obtained either by simulation or experimentally during the convective drying of resorcinol-formaldehyde gels are compared. Such a comparison constitutes an attractive way to validate drying simulation models. X-ray microtomography, a powerful 3D imaging technique, coupled to image analysis is used to determine the internal moisture profiles in a non dest...

Ammonium perchlorate particles have been dried in a laboratory spouted bed dryer (screen-bottomed type) which is categorized as a fluidized bed dryer. The solid particles obtained in this process of drying were semi-porous and known as the group D of Geldart classification. The variations of moisture content with resident time, the effects of bed height on the pressure dro...

Objective: Potato is the fourth important food crop after wheat, rice and maize. Shrinkage  of  food  materials  has  a negative  consequence  on  the  quality  of  the dehydrated product. The main objective pursued in this paper is to investigate the shrinkage amount of potato slices during drying process using vacuum-infrared method. Methods: In this work, the effect of the infrared radiation...

The drying of solids in a continuously worked vibrated fluidised bed dryer is studied by simulations. A model considering the drying of a thin layer of particles wetted with a multicomponent mixture is developed. Particles are assumed well mixed in the direction of the airflow and only the longitudinal changes of liquid content, liquid composition and particle temperature are considered. Intera...

Plant tissue has a complex cellular structure which is an aggregate of individual cells bonded by middle lamella. During drying processes, plant tissue undergoes extreme deformations which are mainly driven by moisture removal and turgor loss. Numerical modelling of this problem becomes challenging when conventional grid-based modelling techniques such as finite element and finite difference me...

Objective: Potato is the fourth important food crop after wheat, rice and maize. Shrinkage  of  food  materials  has  a negative  consequence  on  the  quality  of  the dehydrated product. The main objective pursued in this paper is to investigate the shrinkage amount of potato slices during drying process using vacuum-infrared method. Methods: In this work, the effect of the infrared radiation...