Predicting the energy consumption of continuous well-mixed fluidized bed dryers from drying kinetic data

Previous work has shown that it is possible to predict the size of a contin uous well-mixed fluidized bed dryer from batch drying curve measurements. T his approach has been extended in the present study to include energy consu mption calculations. A computer code was written to simulate the performanc e of the dryer and to determine its specific energy consumption E-S. Starti ng in this case with an isothermal bed batch drying curve, the program firs t calculates the mean solids residence time required under specified operat ing conditions. Mass and energy balances are then used to calculate the hea t duty and E-S. The bed temperature was found to have a significant effect on specific energy consumption in all cases. However, the influences of air flowrate and humidity, and of solids loading, were shown to depend on the solids drying characteristics.