The Process Transport of Drying Corn With Mixed-Adsorption Drying

Abstract

Mixed-adsorption drying with adsorptive material such as zeolite is an option to enhance the performance of drying corn. In this case, zeolite and seeds are mixed and fluidized by warm air as drying medium. The air will evaporate water from seed, and at the same time, zeolite will adsorb vapor from air. Thus, the humidity of air in dryer can be kept low in which improves the driving force for drying. So, the process can be more efficient in low or medium temperature and the corn quality can be retained. This paper discusses the process transport of the drying formulated in two dimensional modelling. In this case, the drying rate and water diffusivity in corn was estimated with experimental data. While, the adsorption rate and diffusivity of water in zeolite as well as other important process constants was assumed based on literature. Results showed that the drying can run well and the model can describe the profiles of moisture and temperature in corn and zeolite. It can be also noted that saturation time of zeolites particles is faster than drying time of corn. It means that more zeolite is required in the mixture to keep driving force being still high.