A complete simulation model has been developed for an industrial rotary dry
er to account for the heat and mass exchange between the solids and the gas
. This simulator is mainly composed of three models: solids transportation
model furnace model, and gas model. The solids transportation model is the
modified Cholette-Cloutier model It consists of a series of interactive res
ervoirs which are subdivided into an active and a dead compartments to acco
unt for the characteristic extended tail of the residence time distribution
(RTD) curves observed in industrial dryers.
To expand the validity of the model, experiments have been performed in an
industrial rotary dryer to obtain RTD curves under different mineral concen
trate and gas flow rates. This paper describes these experiments and presen
ts the variation of the average residence time and model parameters as func
tion of solids and gas flow rates.