Table of contents -introduction about drying -purpose -mechanism -applications -choice of suitable dryer -equipment

Drying is a mass transfer process consisting of the removal of water moisture or moisture from another solvent, by evaporation from a solid, semi-solid or liquid (hereafter product). To be considered "drying", the final product must be a solid, either as a continuous sheet (e.g., paper), as long pieces (eg. wood), particles (cereal grains, corn flakes) or in powder form (sand, salt, washing powder, milk powder). To achieve this, there must be a source of heat, and a sink of the vapor thus produced. In bioproducts (food, grains, vaccines), and pharmaceuticals, the solvent to be removed is almost invariably water
In the most common case, a gas stream, e.g., air, applies the heat by convection and carries away the vapor as humidity. Other possibilities are vacuum drying, where heat is supplied by conduction or radiation (or microwaves) while the vapor thus produced is removed by the vacuum system. Another indirect technique is drum drying (used, for instance, for manufacturing potato flakes), where a heated surface is used to provide the energy and aspirators draw the vapor outside the room. Freeze drying or lyophilization is a drying method where the solvent is frozen prior to drying and is then sublimed, i.e., passed to the gas phase directly from the solid phase, below the melting point of the solvent. Freeze drying is often carried out under high vacuum to allow drying to proceed at a reasonable rate. This process avoids collapse of the solid structure, leading to a low density, highly porous product, able to regain the solvent quickly. In biological materials or foods, freeze drying is regarded as one of the best if not the best method to retain the initial properties. It was first used industrially to produce dehydrated vaccines, and to bring dehydrated blood for assistance of war casualties. Now freeze drying is increasingly used to preserve some foods, especially for backpackers going to remote areas. The method may keep protein quality intact. Vitamins and bioactive compounds are more likely to be retained as well.

Purpose of drying -reduction of transportation cost

-to make the material more suitable for handling -prevention from corrosion Drying mechanism In some products having a high initial moisture content, an initial linear reduction of the average product moisture content as a function of time may be observed for a short time.

If drying is continued, the slope of the curve, the drying rate, becomes less steep (falling rate period) and eventually tends to a horizontal, at very long times, to become in equilibrium with the dehydrating medium. In the falling rate period, water migration from the product interior to the surface is mostly by molecular diffusion, i,e. the water flux is proportional to the moisture content gradient. This means that water moves from zones with higher moisture content to zones with lower values, a phenomenon explained by the second law of thermodynamics. If water removal is considerable, products undergo shrinkage and deformation, except in a well designed freeze drying process.

Methods of drying

In a typical phase diagram, the boundary between gas and liquid runs from the triple point to the critical point. Regular drying is the green arrow, while supercritical drying is the red arrow and freeze drying is the blue.

Application of heated air (convective or direct drying). Air heating reduces air relative humidity, enlarging the driving force for drying. Besides, higher temperatures speed up diffusion of water inside the solids, so drying becomes even faster. However, product quality considerations limit the applicable rise to air temperature. An excessively hot air almost completely dehydrates the solid surface, its pores shrink and almost close, leading to crust formation or "case hardening", which is usually undesirable. For instance in wood (timber) drying, air is heated (which speeds up drying) though some steam is also added to it (with hinders drying rate to a certain extent) in order to avoid excessive surface dehydration and product deformation owing to high moisture gradients across timber thickness. Indirect or contact drying (heating through a hot wall), as drum drying, vacuum drying. Dielectric drying (radiofrequency or microwaves being absorbed inside the material) It is the focus of intense research nowadays. It may be used to assist air drying or vacuum drying. Researchers have found that microwave finish drying speeds up the otherwise very low drying rate at the end of the classical drying methods. Freeze drying Is increasingly applied to dry foods, beyond its already classical pharmaceutical or medical applications. It keeps biological properties of proteins,

and retains vitamins and bioactive compounds. Pressure can be reduced by a high vacuum pump (though freeze drying at atmospheric pressure is possible in dry air). If using a vacuum pump, the vapor produced by sublimation is removed from the system by converting it into ice in a condenser, operating at very low temperatures, outside the freeze drying chamber.

Supercritical drying (superheated steam drying) involves steam drying of products containing water. This process is feasible because water in the product is boiled off, and joined with the drying medium, increasing its flow. It is usually employed in closed circuit and allows a proportion of latent heat to be recovered by recompression, a feature which is not possible with conventional air drying, for instance. May have potential for foods if carried out at reduced pressure, to lower the boiling point. Natural air drying takes place when materials are dried with unheated forced air, taking advantage of its natural drying potential. The process is slow and weatherdependent, so a wise strategy "fan off-fan on" must be devised considering the following conditions: Air temperature, relative humidity and moisture content and temperature of the material being dried. Grains are increasingly dried with this technique, and the total time (including fan off and on periods) may last from one week to various months, if a winter rest can be tolerated in cold areas.

Applications -grain dryers

Hundreds of millions of tonnes of wheat,corn, soybean, rice other grains as sorghum, sunflower seeds, rapeseed/canola, barley, oats, etc., are dried in grain dryers. In the main agricultural countries, drying comprises the reduction of moisture from about 17-30%w/w to values between 8 and 15%w/w, depending on the grain. The final moisture content for drying must be adequate for storage. The more oil the grain has, the lower its storage moisture content will be (though its initial moisture for drying will also be lower).

Spray drying Spray drying is an important technique to produce dried powders. The principle is that a pumpable feed is first atomized, i.e., converted in a fog of droplets of about 100 micrometers in diameter, which dry very fast while falling by gravity, accompanied by heated air. The dried particles eventually exit through the bottom of the dryer and are separated from the drying air by a cyclone, or a system based on cyclones plus bag filters or electrostatic precipitators. Milk powder is possibly the most popular product, followed by instant coffee. Tomato powder is becoming very important. -Drying is often used to preserve food
The production of anhydrous alcohol requires azeotropic distillation, or a membrane process. The 96 mixture of ethanol-water cannot be separated by distillation,.

As a minimum, the following quantitative information is necessary to arrive at a suitable dryer: Dryer throughput; mode of feedstock production (batch/continuous) Physical, chemical and biochemical properties of the wet feed as well as desired product specifications; expected variability in feed characteristics Upstream and downstream processing operations Moisture content of the feed and product Drying kinetics; moist solid sorption isotherms Quality parameters (physical, chemical, biochemical) Safety aspects, e.g., fire hazard and explosion hazards, toxicity Value of the product Need for automatic control Toxicological properties of the product Turndown ratio, flexibility in capacity requirements Type and cost of fuel, cost DRYERS FOR PARTICULATES AND GRANULAR SOLIDS Tray Dryers By far the most common dryer for small tonnage products, a batch tray dryer consists of a stack of trays or several stacks of trays placed in a large insulated chamber in which hot air is circulated with appropriately designed fans and guide vanes. Often, a part of the exhausted air is recirculated with a fan located within or outside the drying chamber. These dryers require large amount of labor to load and unload the product. Typically, the drying times are long (10-60 hours). The key to successful operation is the uniform air flow distribution over the trays as the slowest drying tray decides the residence time required and hence

Batch tray dryer It is possible to convert the batch tray dryer into a continuous unit. shows the so-called Turbo dryer, which consists of a stack of coaxial circular trays mounted on a single vertical shaft. Hot air is supplied to the drying chamber by turbine fans. In the design shown, the air is heated indirectly by passage over internal heaters. The wet granular material is fed at the top and it falls under gravity to the next tray through radial slots in each circular shelf. A rotating rake mixes the solids and thus improves the drying performance. Such dryers can be operated under vacuum for heat-sensitive materials or when solvents must be recovered from the vapor. In a modified design, it is possible to heat the trays by

turbo dryer rotary dryer

cascad ing rotary dryer

is a continuously operated direct contact dryer consisting of a slowly revolving cylindrical shell that is typically inclined to the horizontal a few degrees to aid the transportation of the wet feedstock which is introduced into the drum at the upper end and the dried product withdrawn at the lower end (Figure 3). To increase the retention time of very fine and light materials in the dryer (e.g., cheese granules), in rare cases, it may be advantageous to incline the cylinder with the product end at a higher elevation. FigureRotary dryers can be designed for drying time from 10 to 60 minutes. If large retention time is needed for removing the internal moisture in the falling rate period, it is possible to use a smaller shell diameter at the wet end for surface moisture removal with low holdup of material in the drum and then increase the shell diameter at the dry end to allow longer retention time with larger holdup. In some designs, it is possible to use a pneumatic conveyor to carry the product out of the dryer. Thermal efficiencies of rotary dryers vary widely in the range of 3060%. For good efficiency, the product holdup (typically 10-15 percent of volume) should be such as to cover the flights or lifters fully. The lifters should be carefully designed to ensure good cascading action, avoiding large clusters of material falling from the flights. Length-todiameter ratios of 4 to 10 are common in industrial practice. Rotary dryers can be operated atRotary dryers can be operated at very high temperatures to accomplish various reactions in addition to or instead of simple drying; these units are referred to as kilns. It is necessary to line the shell of rotary kilns with suitable refractory materials. In order to enhance

Freeze dryers Highly heat-sensitive solids, such as some certain biotechnological materials, pharmaceuticals and foods with high flavor content, may be freeze dried at a cost that is at least one order-of-magnitude higher than that of spray drying itself not an inexpensive drying operation. Here, drying occurs below the triple point of the liquid by sublimation of the frozen moisture into vapor, which is then removed from the drying chamber by mechanical vacuum pumps or steam jet ejectors. Generally, freeze drying yields the highest quality product of any dehydration techniques. A porous, non-shrunken structure of the product allows rapid rehydration. Flavor retention is also high due to the low temperature operation (-40o C). Living cells, e.g., bacteria, yeast's and viruses can be freeze dried and the viability on reconstitution can still be high. Mammalian cells, however, cannot be preserved by freeze drying. Because of its inherently high cost nature, freeze drying is not common in the chemical industry. Most freeze dryers are batch-type with rather low capacities although some continuous freeze drying units are in operation. Industrial freeze dryers can be of several types; simple tray freeze dryers are by far the most common. Heat for sublimation is

supplied by conduction through the tray bottom. Vacuum pressure is typically under 25 Pa and the condenser operates at around 40o C. The heaters start at a higher temperature (say, 120o C) but the temperature drops with time, according to schedules determined empirically, to lower values, say 40o C over 8-10 hour runs. To minimize drying times, freeze dryers are program-controlled

Spray dryer Over 20,000 spray dryers are presently in use commercially to dry products from agro-chemicals, biotechnologicals, fine and heavy chemicals, dairy products, dyestuffs, mineral concentrates to pharmaceuticals in capacities ranging from a few kg per h to 50 tons per h evaporation capacity. Liquid feedstocks, such as solutions, suspensions or emulsions can be converted into powder, granular or agglomerate form in one step operation in spray dryer. Figure 7 gives a process schematic for a spray dryer plant. Atomized feedstock in the form of a spray is contacted with hot gas in a suitably designed drying chamber. Proper selection and design of the atomizer is vital to the operation of the spray dryer as it is affected by the type of feed (viscosity), abrasive property of the feed, feed rate, desired particle size and size distribution as well as the design of the chamber geometries and mode of flow, e.g., concurrent, countercurrent or mixed flow (see Figure 8).

drum dryers, slurries or pasty feedstocks are dried on the surface of a slowly rotating steam-heated drum. A thin film of the paste is applied on the surface in various ways. The dried film is doctored off once it is dry and collected as flakes (rather than powder). shows four types of commonly used drum dryer arrangements, which are self-explanatory. The design of applicator rolls is important since the drying performance depends on the thickness and evenness of the film applied. The paste must stick to the surface of the drum for such a drop to be applicable. Four key variables influence the drum dryer performance. They are: (a) steam pressure or heating medium temperature, (b) Speed of rotation, (c) Thickness of film and (d) Feed properties, e.g., solids concentration, rheology and temperature. Because it allows good control of the drying temperature, drum dryers may be used to produce a precise hydrate of a chemical compound rather than a mixture of hydrates.

Tunnel dryers In this simple dryer concept, cabinets, trucks or trolleys containing the material to be dried are transported at an appropriate speed through a long insulated chamber (or tunnel) while hot drying gas is made to flow in concurrent, countercurrent, cross-flow or mixed flow fashion In the concurrent mode, the hottest and driest air meets the wetted material and hence results in high initial drying rates but with relatively low product temperature (wet-bulb temperature if surface moisture is present). Higher gas temperatures can be used in concurrent arrangements while in counter-current dryers the inlet drying gas must be at a lower temperature if the product is heatsensitive. If the material to be dried is not heat-sensitive and low residual moisture content is a requirement, one may employ higher gas temperatures in the countercurrent arrangement as well. Combination flow or cross-flow arrangements are used less commonly. The latter offer high drying rates but the tunnels must be designed to fit the trolleys snugly so the drying gas flows through the material much like a through-circulation packed bed dryer. Total drying times that can be handled range from 30 minutes to 6 hours.

Resources www.wikipedia.com serve.me.nus.edu.sg/arun/file/teaching/ME5202.pdf