Drying of soybean seeds in a crossflow moving bed

The aim of this work was to investigate simultaneous heat and mass transfer between air and soybean seeds in a crossflow moving bed dryer. A model was developed from mass and energy conservation applied to the fluid and particulate phases. The equilibrium, heat transfer and mass transfer equations were taken From studies published earlier. Equations for drying kinetics were obtained from a thin layer study, and the equilibrium equation was chosen from rival model discrimination based on nonlinearity measures. The experimental pan of this work involved the determination of air temperature distribution, grain moisture through the bed and air humidity at the bed outlet. The model equations were discretized by orthogonal collocation in the air flow direction. The resulting differential-algebraic equations were solved using a method based on backward differential formulas. Simulation results showed good agreement with experimental data.