Contact Drying of Thin Sheet Materials

Abstract

The contact drying of thin sheets of absorbent cell wall materials was studied experimentally and theoretically.
In a thin sheet, the resistance to transmission in the material phase is negligibly small compared with that in the air phase, and so moisture content and temperature of the material can be considered to be equally distributed during drying. In such cases, drying rates changing continuously could be obtained by considering the equilibrium relation of material and the rates of simultaneous transfer of heat and mass between material and air. The drying rates calculated by means of the analytical method proposed by the authors were in excellent agreement with the experimental ones measured by use of a specially designed wind-tunnel type of hot-surface dryer.