Simulation Study for Pneumatic Conveying Drying of Sawdust for Pellet Production

Pneumatic conveying drying (PCD) is a combination of heat and mass transfer and pneumatic handling technology. This technology has been extensively used in chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industries, as well as many others. The PCD technique is beneficial for agricultural products, because it can achieve high-quality drying with reduced heat damage in a very short time. In this study, one-dimensional and three-dimensional mathematical models for the drying of sawdust particles in a pneumatic dryer were developed and verified with experiments. The three-dimensional modeling was done with a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package (ANSYS FLUENT, Ver. 13.0, Ansys, Inc.), in which the gas phase is modeled as a continuum using the Euler approach, and the droplet/particle phase is modeled by a discrete phase model with a Lagrange approach. One-dimensional analysis was performed in MATLAB (Ver. 7.0). The experiments were carried out to validate the model in a pneumatic dryer with a horizontal length of 1m, vertical height of 1.1 m, and diameter of 0.14 m. Sawdust, a raw material used for producing pellets, was prepared from well-seasoned pinewood timber. The initial moisture content of the sawdust was 22% (wb). The hot air inlet temperature in the dryer was fixed at 100 degrees C. The variations in air pressure, air velocity, air temperature, and particle moisture content were investigated along the length of the dryer. The final moisture contents of sawdust and air temperature were reduced by 2% (wb) and 5 degrees C, respectively. The simulated values were in good agreement with the experimental values. The developed model was then employed for the design of a pilot-scale pneumatic dryer (length 7m and diameter 0.14 m). The final moisture content of the sawdust particles was reduced to 14% (wb) when the dryer length was increased from 1 to 7 m. In addition, the modeling was performed using buffers in the pilot-scale dryers. The use of a buffer noticeably increased the drying efficiency.