Experiment No-7

STUDIES ON BATCH DRYING AND GENERATION OF DRYING CURVE

Introduction:

This operation involves removal of moisture from a substance by evaporation into a gas stream.
Drying in batches is relatively expensive, and is used to dry valuable materials. Rate of drying
curve obtained from batch drying provides information about the time for drying under different
drying conditions, and helps in designing continuous operation.

Objectives:

To generate drying curve for the sample provided

Theory:

Drying is an important unit operation in Chemical Engineering. During a drying operation a

solvent that is not chemically bound to a solid, is removed by blowing a hot gas over or through
the solid. In the majority of cases the solvent is water and the hot gas is air. Examples of its use
are the drying of a crystalline solid at the final stage of a process, or the drying of a natural
product, such as wood.

In designing a dryer, it is important to understand the rate at which drying occurs, so that the
product can be kept in the dryer for the correct amount of time. This is the reason for
determining the rate of drying curve.

Figure 1 is a plot of the moisture content (X) against time for a solid that is being dried. The
moisture content is expressed as a mass of solvent per unit mass of dry solid. For example, for
water as solvent,
kg moisture present in solid
X (1)
kg dry solid
It is more informative to plot the drying rate against moisture content shown in Figure 2. If time
is represented by θ, then the drying rate is defined as
S dX
Drying rate (kg/m2 s) = (2) 
Ad

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(Where, S is the weight of dry solid, in kg and A is the drying surface area, in m2).

Figure 1: Plot of X vs. θ Figure 2: Rate-of-drying curve

In Figures 1 and 2, the letters signify the start of a particular drying regime. These are described
below.

A-B: This section of the curve represents a warming up period, when the hot air used for drying
is heating the surface of the wet solid from the ambient temperature to the temperature of
the hot air.
B-C: This region is known as the constant rate period. In this region, the surface of the solid is
saturated with water and the rate at which water evaporates is controlled by the rate of
heat transfer to the surface of the solid. Drying proceeds by diffusion of water from the
solid surface, across a stagnant air film and into the surroundings. The rate of mass
transfer of water from the solid matches the rate of heat transfer from the surroundings.
The process is exactly the same as evaporation from a pool of liquid. The constant rate
period ends at point C, which denotes the critical moisture content (CMC).
C-D: This region is known as the falling rate period. It starts at the critical moisture content
and is split into two zones. The first zone is called the unsaturated surface drying zone
and as its name implies it is similar to the constant rate period but not all the surface is
saturated. As drying proceeds the surface of the solid becomes completely unsaturated.
The movement of moisture from within the solid to the surface then controls the rate of
drying. This can be a very slow process.
The importance of the rate-of-drying curve is as follows:
If the initial and final moisture contents for the solid are both greater than the critical moisture
content then drying will be an fast operation whose speed can be controlled by external factors
such as air flow rate and air temperature.
If the initial moisture content is greater than the CMC but the final moisture content is less than
the CMC, then drying could be an extremely slow process and the rate will depend heavily on
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the nature of the solid and cannot be altered by external variables such as air flow and
temperature.
Experimental Set-Up:

The set-up consists of drying chamber, blower, air-heater, wet-bulb and dry bulb thermometers,
digital weighing balance and other accessories.

Experimental Procedure:

1. Take empty weight of a petridish.

2. Take some (say 50 gm) bone dry sand in this petridish. (Weight to be specified)
3. Add water (say 15 cc) to this sand as specified by instructor.
4. Switch on the blower and the air heater. Maintain a temperature of 45oC in the drying
chamber. The digital thermometer display indicates the chamber temperature.
5. At 45oC, put the wet sand in the drying chamber and take the loss in weight at every two
minutes interval till the weight is constant. Measure the air velocity and ambient air wet and
dry bulb temperatures.
6. Repeat this experiment for different air velocities and temperatures as instructed

Data Analysis:
Using the data recorded during the experiment, plot curves of moisture content against time and
drying rate against moisture content as shown in Figures 1 & 2. Use these curves to estimate the
critical moisture content.

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