Study on heat and mass transfer of flexible filamentous particles in a rotary dryer

Analysis of the use of a non-conventional rotary drum for dehydration of microalga Spirulina platensis

The high content of bioactive compounds in the microalga Spirulina platensis has recently attracted attention from food and pharmaceutical industries. However, for its application an effective preservation technique must be developed. In this paper, we investigated the use of a non-conventional rotary dryer (with an inert bed) for drying the microalga Spirulina biomass and the effects of the operational conditions (air temperature, intermittent feeding interval, filling degree of inert particles, and rotation speed) on its bioactive compounds. The results indicated that this non-conventional drying system offers an effective alternative for expanding the use of this biomass in an adequate form. We identified the conditions in which the dried material had maintained satisfactory contents of phenolics (air temperature of 70 °C and intermittent feeding interval of 10 min), flavonoids (intermittent feeding interval of 17.4 min), and phycocyanin compounds (air temperature of 40 °C), which were near to those present in fresh microalga.

Indirect Dryers for Biomass Drying—Comparison of Experimental Characteristics for Drum and Rotary Configurations

This paper focuses on indirect biomass drying. It compares the operating characteristics of a laboratory-scale drum dryer and a pilot-scale rotary dryer. Before the design of an industrial dryer for a specific material, it is important to experimentally prove the process and to determine the drying characteristics of the material. To verify the portability of experimental results for indirect dryers, a drum dryer with indirect electric heating in a laboratory scale was designed and built to test and study the process of indirect drying. Based on the results obtained on a small-scale device, a prototype of a pilot steam-heated rotary dryer was designed and manufactured. A broad range of experiments with green wood chips and wet bark from open-air storage with moisture contents of 50 to 65 wt % were carried out on both dryers. The drying curves indicating the process, the square and volumetric evaporation capacities, and the drying energy consumption were obtained and compared, and the feasibility of indirect drying for these tested types of biomass was confirmed.