Dynamic Simulation of an Industrial Rotary Dryer

Solid transport phenomena drastically affect rotary drying process. A change in any solid movement variable such as particle hold up or input flow rate results in asignificant variation of heat and mass transfer rates. Therefore, in this research dynamic study of these phenomena was conducted both experimentally and theoretically. Several experiments was performed employing an industrial granuledryer. The dryer length and diameter were 5 and 1 m, respectively. In each experimentone of the solid movement variables was changed and the resulting dynamic change onthe process was measured. The data was used to estimate the parameters of a dynamicdistributed parameter model of the system using dynamic optimization method. Thedata were also employed to evaluate the model. The model predictions for solid hold upand outlet flow rate were compared with those of the experimental data. The average model error for solid hold up and outlet flow rate were 5.6% and 5.4 %, respectively