Moisture equilibrium of wood and bark chips in superheated steam

This study relating to the steam drying of biofuels suggests that the activities of water in air (defined as relative humidity) and of water in superheated steam (defined as the ratio of the saturated pressure and the saturated pressure at the superheated temperature) are identical. The dependence of the activity in superheated steam on the equilibrium moisture content was studied in various experiments for different wood materials at constant temperatures of 140 and 160°C. The equilibrium moisture content was found to depend on the following factors: the activity of the superheated steam, the temperature and the materials used, the first of these being the most important. The experimentally determined sorption isotherms were compared with different sorption theories. The Dent model gave a good correlation with the experimental data. The sorbed water can be divided into primary water with high binding energy and secondary water with low binding energy. If biofuels are to be dried with superheated steam, an equilibrium moisture fraction of 0.05 seems to be relevant. It will probably be possible to reach this with activities in the range 0.2–0.4 for all real materials.