Determinación del diámetro y la longitud de un secador rotatorio adiabático para el secado de un material sensible al calor.

Abstract

Drying is one of the most complete operations when it comes to reducing the moisture content of a product. In addition, it is one of the last stages that occurs in the process. It is necessary to highlight that, for the selection of a drying equipment, it is important to know the type of process that is going to be carried out in order to be able to correctly choose the design of the equipment in question, since this influences the moisture content to be reduced, the process cost and product quality. In the present work, the diameter and length of an adiabatic rotary dryer were determined to dry a heat-sensitive solid, using the principles of heat transfer. The main results obtained were: the appropriate temperatures for drying a material sensitive to heat, the dry air flow rate at the dryer inlet and the L/D ratio. The determined diameter and length, with an N_t of 1.5, were 1.68 m and 10.31 m, respectively, resulting in an L⁄D ratio of 6.1, which shows that the rotary dryer in question has an ideal efficiency according to commercial practice. In addition, the design of a rotary dryer is more economical when the N_t ranges between 1.5 and 2.5.