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denses on the surfaces and causes costly rejections. The obtain comfort a t the lowest possible cost. (c) Those who
lowering of the dew point to a t least 20" below the prevailing have been concerned with adsorbent drying have been en-
dry-bulb temperature, by means of an activated alumina gaged in the standardization of equipment to be used in exist-
dehumidifier, completely eliminated this difficulty. I n an- ing and less competitive lines. It is believed that adsorbent
other plant 5 per cent relative humidity a t 76" F. is being dehumidification, in conjunction with refrigeration or other
maintained for the purpose of testing electrical appara- methods of cooling, has a place in comfort conditioning.
tus under specific conditions. Another activated alumina This place will be fixed by the prevailing costs of power, gas,
installation is used in Conjunction with the drying of cellu- cooling water, and by any future progress which may be made
loid products where the dry air prevents blemishes which in adsorption equipment specially adapted to this application.
form on the product when the moisture concentration becomes Adsorbents have been known for a long time but their com-
too great. These several applications are merely indicative of mercial use is new. The success which has been attained so far
the variety of operations which may be improved by controlled is the basis for predicting a promising future for the greater
humidity. use of complete and partially dried gases.
Comfort Air Conditioning Literature Cited
(1) Bower, Bur. Standards J . Research, 12, 241 (1934).
Much less progress has been made in the comfort air con- (2) Dover and Marden, J . Am. Chem. SOC., 39,1609 (1917).
ditioning of houses and public buildings than in the industrial (3) Johnson, Ibid., 34, 911 (1912).
field. The major reasons are as follows: (a) I n addition to (4) Munro and Johnson, IND.ENQ.CHEM.,17,88 (1925).
dehumidification, some sensible heat must be eliminated. (5) Yoe, Chem. News, 130,340 (1926).
(b) Each large installation must be separately engineered to RXICEIVED
February 7, 1938.
1. EXPERIMENTAL
FIGURE DRYER
FIGURE
2. DRYING
OF SAND
Experimental conditions were as follows, with variations as noted for each
set of curves: air temperature ljOo F 9relative humidity, 3 0 , p e r cent:
air velocity, 300 feet/minute: katerial a e p t h , 1 inch; particle size, 20-30
mesh; insulated tray.
A. Effect of tray insulation D. Effect of air velocity
B. Effect of air temperature E. Effect of particle size
C. Effect of relative humidity 8'. Effect of material depth
PERCENT MOISTURE CONTENT - D R Y BASIS
showing the effect of air temperature and relative humidity the top of the tray until the level reached tlie bottom of tile
isdiscussed later. tray.
rate of 50 per cent, and indicates that the movement of mois- rw = latent heat of vaporization of water a t surface
ture from the interior to the surface of the sand bed may well temperature
d W / d s = instantaneous rate of evaporation of water
be due to capillary forces.
The particle size of sand over the range studied in this in-
vestigation apparently does not have a considerable effect The equilibrium temperature (tu) reached under these con-
on the critical moisture content, but the value appears to in- ditions is the wet-bulb temperature. The value of h/kr, de-
crease slightly for the finer sand'(Figure 2E). Ceaglske and pends on the temperature and humidity of the air and, accord-
ing to psychrometric charts, it should vary from 0.29 to 0.24
for the conditions employed with water in air in the present
investigation (when the temperature is expressed in degrees
Fahrenheit and the partial pressure in millimeters of mercury).
If heat is supplied to the wet surface by radiation as well as
convection from the surroundings, h in Equation 1is replaced
by (h, + h,.), and a slightly higher surface temperature is
attained with a resultant increase in the rate of evaporation.
If heat is supplied to the material by convection and conduc-
tion through the unwetted surfaces of the tray, the wetted
surface temperature and the rate of evaporation are correspond-
ingly higher. This effect was noted by Sherwood in his work
on the tray drying of clays (8).
I n order to correlate the present test data, the dry- and wet-
bulb temperatures of the air were corrected as previously de-
scribed and, together with the measured surface temperature,
were used as a basis for computing the partial pressure dif-
EVAPORATION TIME - HOURS ference of water in the air and a t the drying surface and also
FIGURE3. E~APORATIOX
OF WATERFROM FREESURFACE the temperature difference between the air and drying sur-
(Standard experimental conditions with exceptions a s noted)
face. Mass transfer and over-all heat transfer coefficients
were then computed b y the application of Equation 1. These
coefficients are given in Table I1 as pounds of water/(hour)
Hougen's data also indicated a negligible increase in critical (square foot) (mm. mercury) and B. t. u./ (hour) (square foot)
moisture with increase in fineness of the sand. Over the same ( O F.), respectively.
Correlation of Results
The mass transfer coefficients represent the mass transfer
I n a drying process where heated air or gas supplies all the a t the wetted surface and need not be corrected for heat in-
heat for the evaporation of water directly to the wetted sur- put through unwetted surfaces, since this had already been
face, a dynamic equilibrium is set up between the rate of heat taken into account by the use of the actual surface tempera-
input to the material and the rate of moisture removal from
tures. The heat transfer coefficient, however, is an over-all
the wet surface. This equilibrium may for practical purposes coefficient which includes the heat transferred through all sur-
be expressed as follows :
faces by both convection and radiation. In order to obtain a
heat transfer coefficient representing heat transfer to the
r,dW/d@ = hA(t, - t,) = kAr,(p, - pa) (1) wetted surface due to convection only, the over-all coefficients
or Pw - Pa - -h were corrected for heat transfer by radiation and conduction
t, - t, k rw through the unwetted surfaces and radiation to the wetted
where h, k = heat transfer and mass transfer Coefficients, surface. The resulting coefficients, h,, are given in Table I1
respectively and represent the coefficients which would be obtained if the
A = area of wetted surface trays were perfectly insulated and the radiation to the wetted
t,, t , = temperatures of air and surface (in this case surface was negligible.
equivalent to wet-bulb), respectively
pa, p , = partial pressures of water in'air and at wetted A brief discussion of the heat transfer considerations in-
surface, respectively volved in the drying of material in trays is desirable a t this
394 INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY VOL. 30, NO. 4
point, since in many plant installations the heat input t o the the thermal conductivity of the material appeared to be of the
unwetted surfaces of the trays is often as large as that to the order of 2 B. t. u./(hour) (square foot) ( O F./foot), whereas
wetted surfaces, and this directly affects the rate of drying that of dry sand is only 0.2 and that of water about 0.4. This
from the wetted surfaces. This is shown by the high drying surprisingly high value appears to be real, since it is well out-
rates obtained in tests 1 and 11 using unlagged trays. Such side the range of any experimental error that might occur in
a discussion will serve to indicate the method used for correct- the temperature measurements. One possible explanation is
ing the over-all heat transfer coefficients obtained in the pres- that an evaporation-condensation phenomenon occurs within
ent detailed investigation and a t the same time to point out a the bed of the material which materially assists in the transfer
logical approach to the solution of practical problems. of heat from a lower to a higher stratum. This matter war-
When material is dried in a tray in a stream of air, heat may rants further investigation.
be transferred to the wetted surface in three ways: (a) by With the value of ICl known or estimated, the only unknown
direct convection from the air stream, ( b ) by radiation from factor in the above expressions becomes hl. Both Equations
the dryer walls or the surrounding trays, and ( c ) by heat trans- 3 and 4 may then be expressed as follows :
fer through the material bed (which in turn is comprised of
convection and radiation to the unwetted tray surfaces and (5)
conduction through the trays and the material being dried).
This may be expressed as follows:
hi = ho + + hr ha (2) where C is a constant depending on the thermal conductivities
of both material and tray; then in the general case,
where ht =e over-all heat transfer coefficient for total heat to
wetted surface
h, = heat transfer coefficient for convection to wetted
surface
h, = heat transfer coefficient for radiation to wetted sur-
face [equals actual h', as predicted by radiation
formulas corrected to same basis as h, (multiplied
by ta - t a / t w - L)l
h, = over-all heat transfer coefficient for heat to wetted
surface through unwetted surfaces
(4) /
u - I
B
I n the above expressions for h, the thicknesses (L1 and Lz) I
and the area ratios (Au,A I ,and A*) are known for any given 10 500 1000 ZOO0 3000 5000
case. The thermal conductivity of the tray itself and of any
insulation can be readily obtained from available data. The MASS
VELOCITY
(G)-LBs/(SQ. FT.)(HR3
thermal conductivity of the wet material is less readily de- 5. EVAPORATION
FIGURE OF WATER
termined. On the basis of the temperatures recorded by the
A. Effect of air velocity on mass transfer Coefficients
thermocouples located in the wet sand in the present tests, B. Effect of air velocity on heat transfer coeffioients
Substituting for h, in Equation 2, the following
equation is obtained:
The chart is based on the difference between the dry-bulb and When the drying takes place in unlagged solid bottom trays,
wet-bulb temperatures of the entering stream of air. The the surface temperature of the material may be calculated
absolute drying rates shown are based on a heat transfer coef- reasonably accurately by the application of the same heat
ficient of 3.1 B. t. u./(hour) (square foot) (” F.) for air a t 300 transfer methods and the chart readings corrected by the
feet/minute velocity, 150” F., and 30 per cent relative hu-
midity. They also take into account the change in air den-
factor (-)
t o - t,
where t, = dry-bulb temperature, t, = surface
sity with temperature. This value was obtained from Figure temperature, and t, = wet-bulb temperature.
5B and was chosen slightly (i. e., 10 per cent) below that given The fact that the proposed method for computing drying
by the smooth curve representing the present data in order rates is applicable only to the constant rate period of drying
to give some weight to the other data studied. Until further definitely limits its scope. There are a number of possible
data on other materials are available, this chart may be as- uses for the method, however, which were not investigated in
sumed approximately correct for any material in the constant the present study. The over-all drying time of some ma-
rate period of drying. terials exhibiting a distinct falling rate period has been found
to be influenced by velocity, humidity, and temperature in
approximately the same degree as is the case for the constant
rate period. For these materials a knowledge of the drying
time under any given set of conditions can be used to predict
the drying time under other conditions by analogy to the con-
stant rate period.
Again, for processes where air is blown up or down through
a bed of a granular material, the drying is often nearly 100
per cent within the constant rate period. I n this case the
equivalent area can be determined by a single test, or possibly
by particle size distribution data, and the drying can then be
predicted from constant rate data. The same possibility
applies to the drying of materials in a rotary dryer. Finally,
the above correlation of data for the constant rate drying
period makes it possible to use an over-all drying expression
of the type proposed by Sherwood without the necessity of a
number of drying tests, provided Tc is known. For instance,
the constant in Sherwood’s Equation 9 could be determined
from constant rate data as follows: