Drying kinetics of technical specified rubber

• Main Authors: Mei Xiang Ng, Thing Chai Tham, Sze Pheng Ong, Chung Lim Law
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. 2015-05-01
• Series: Information Processing in Agriculture
• Subjects: Crumb rubber; Drying characteristic; Mathematical modeling
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214317315000165

This paper reports the study of crumb rubber drying in different experimental designs. It is important to understand the characteristics of crumb rubber drying in order to formulate a better drying strategy that could give higher energy efficiency. Four experiments were carried out with constant heat at maximum 100 °C and a stainless steel container was used to hold the sample of crumb rubber under study. The surface temperature profile of the rubber was investigated using two types of drying methods, normal hot air drying and vacuum drying. It was found that when the sample was dried, external surface temperature for drying with hot air dryer was higher than vacuum dryer. The results showed the evolution of temperature profile was not in good agreement with the prediction which revealed that there was no temperature gradient within the drying samples. The energy consumption for vacuum drying was higher compared to hot air drying, where there was a difference of 0.7079 MJ/kg H2O evaporated for drying temperature at 100 °C. The best fit model generated from the experimental data was the modified Henderson and Pabis model and the highest effective diffusivity obtained was 5.243 × 10−9 m2/s heating by vacuum oven at 90 °C under zero atmospheric pressure.