Experimental study of paddy drying in a vortex chamber

ABSTRACT

The intensification of interfacial mass, heat, and momentum transfer makes vortex chambers potentially interesting for the efficient drying of paddy, allowing shorter drying times and/or more compact equipment. The presence of a shell introduces particular challenges. Intraparticle diffusion limitations are strong and may reduce the advantage from intensified interfacial mass and heat transfer and the efficiency of air usage. Furthermore, high shear and normal stresses in the fast rotating particle bed may cause damage to the paddy shell, posing problems for transport and storage. With these specific aspects in mind, the use of vortex chambers for paddy drying is experimentally evaluated.

KEYWORDS:

• Fluidized bed drying
• food drying
• heat and mass transfer
• process intensification

Acknowledgments

The Centre wallon de Recherches agronomiques (Unité Technologies de la Transformation des Produits) is acknowledged for the help with the dry matter and protein content analysis of the paddy samples. The technical support of Luc Wautier is greatly appreciated.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (Grant Agreement Number: PIRSES-GA-2012-312261; Project: “iComFluid—International Collaboration on Computational Modeling of Fluidized Bed Systems for Clean Energy Technologies”). The authors thank the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) for financial support under project FRFC No. 2.4620.11.