Drying kinetics of natural oil sorbent – cattail fluff

Abstract

In the introduction, the properties of fluff of cattail cobs are considered, including when used as an oil sorbent. Taking into account that the sorbent can usually be stored in warehouses until it is used for several years, it is necessary to ensure the safety of its properties, including from damage by microorganisms. To achieve a moisture content of 0.11 kgmoisture/kgdry.mat, at which the development of microorganisms is suspended, it is necessary to dry cattail fluff. Since this material, fluff of cattail cobs, has not been used on an industrial scale (only on a handicraft scale), there are no regularities in its drying in the literary sources. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to clarify some drying parameters, namely, to find the optimal height of the cattail fluff layer in the dryer, which provides the minimum time to reach equilibrium moisture, as well as the kinetic parameters of the drying process. To establish the kinetic parameters of drying and the optimal layer height when loading into the drying chamber, a laboratory dryer was developed, manufactured and used in these studies. The main part describes the installation scheme for studying the kinetics of drying cattail fluff by the weight method and shows the procedure for performing measurements: conditions and sequence of operations. In the ʻʻResults and Discussionʼʼ section, the drying curves obtained during the study and the drying rate curves for different heights of the down layer are given. Based on these data, the mathematical processing of the results was carried out to obtain an equation that makes it possible to calculate the height of the loading layer of the material to be dried and the time required to achieve the required moisture content. The relationship between layer height and drying time is non-linear, increasing the height of the down layer by 2 times leads to an increase in drying time by 4 times and reduces the maximum drying speed by 3 times.