SOLIDS TRANSPORTATION MODEL OF AN INDUSTRIAL ROTARY DRYER

Abstract

ABSTRACT A complete simulation model has been developed for an industrial rotary dryer to account for the heat and mass exchange between the solids and the gas. This simulator is mainly composed of three models: solids transportation model, furnace model, and gas model. The solids transportation model is the modified Cholette-Cloutier model It consists of a series of interactive reservoirs which are subdivided into an active and a dead compartments to account for the characteristic extended tail of the residence time distribution (RTD) curves observed in industrial dryers. To expand the validity of the model, experiments have been performed in an industrial rotary dryer to obtain RTD curves under different mineral concentrate and gas flow rates. This paper describes these experiments and presents the variation of the average residence time and model parameters as function of solids and gas flow rates. Key Words and Phrases: Feed tonnagemineral concentrateoperating conditionsresidence time distributionsecondary air flow rate Notes *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.