DESIGN AND OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE OF CONVEYOR-BELT DRYING STRUCTURES

The design and operational characteristics of conveyor-belt dryers con stitute an important field of chemical engineering, which is still gov erned by empiricism. In this work, both aspects were studied in a stra ightforward way based on mathematical reasoning. A mathematical model describing the convective drying process was developed. Design procedu res aimed at the determination of optimum equipment arrangement, size and operational characteristics for conveyor-belt dryers were carried out by optimizing the total annual cost of each equipment arrangement for a given production capacity. All dryer arrangements were compared by evaluating optimum configurations for a wide range of production ca pacity values. Once the dryer configuration was specified, its operati onal performance was evaluated by comparing the optimum operational co st versus production capacity for a specific optimum designed structur e. An example covering the drying of sliced potato is included to demo nstrate the performance of each design case, as well as the effectiven ess of the proposed approach. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A.