Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Heat and Mass Transfer for Cut Tobacco During Two-Stage Convective Drying

Abstract

In this article, a two-stage convective drying strategy was presented for dehydration of flue-cured tobacco. In order to develop the multistage drying method of tobacco, two-stage drying as well as traditional single-stage drying of cut tobacco was experimentally evaluated and accurately simulated by proposed heat and mass transfer models. The experiments were performed in a dual fixed bed dryer. Different air temperature combinations of 120°C/90°C, 110°C/80°C, and 100°C/70°C were employed during two-stage drying. The drying rate and temperature variations of cut tobacco were investigated. The results showed that the average drying rates during two-stage drying were nearly 50% higher than those obtained from lower-temperature single-stage drying. On the other hand, the two-stage drying method, which used high air temperature for the early period and low temperature for the late period, could reduce the exposure of tobacco to high temperature due to the low final temperature of the dried sample. The temperature and moisture evolution of cut tobacco at different air temperature combinations were consistent with simulation results by developed heat and mass transfer models. This indicated that the models had a good prediction precision for two-stage drying of cut tobacco. The model predictions can be useful for the design of a feasible two-stage drying process for flue-cured tobacco.

Keywords:

• Cut tobacco
• Heat transfer
• Mass transfer
• Simulation
• Two-stage drying