Studies on the effects of physical properties of feed samples on the performance of fluidized bed dryer

The physical properties of grains are analysed at different levels of moisture contents using a fluidized bed dryer. The performance of fluidized bed dryer measured in terms of its efficiency is determined by using different grains as feed samples in the present work. The effects of various system parameters on the moisture content of the samples in turn on the dryer performance are studied. Again, effects of moisture content on different properties of sample, namely, grain volume, surface area, sphericity, bulk density, true density and porosity are studied. These properties of feed sample which determine the flow characteristics of the sample in a fluidized bed dryer are found to affect the dryer efficiency, in turn, the drying quality. An attempt is made to correlate the performance of the dryer against these physical properties of the materials. Thus, the efficiencies of the dryer calculated through the developed correlation and as per the literature are compared with each other. The comparison results show good agreement, thereby implying that the proposed correlation can be used for estimating the dryer performance over a wide range of parameters. With this study, the dryer can be designed properly in a cost-efficient manner.