Drying Model, Shrinkage and Energy Consumption Evaluation of Air Dried Sheet Rubber Drying System for Small Enterprise

Abstract

The main objective of this research was to study drying kinetics of air dried sheet (ADS) rubber using hot air and simulated drying kinetics by empirical model compared to experimental results. The 10-15 fresh rubber sheet with initial moisture content ranging of 23-40% dry-basis was dried by temperature of 40-70°C and air flow rate of 0.7 m/s. The fresh rubber sheet samples were dried until the desired final moisture content reached to 0.15% dry-basis. The experimental results showed that the drying rate of ADS rubber dried with hot air convection was faster than conventional natural air convection and drying rate was related to drying temperature. The experimental data was statistical non-linear regression analyzed by using 10 conventional empirical models. The coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) values were used as the criteria for selecting the best equation to describe the experimental data The results showed that the calculated results of Verma et al.’ model had a good relation to the experimental results. For specific energy evaluation, the results showed that at high drying temperature specific energy consumption of ADS rubber was relatively low compared to drying with low temperature. Finally, the determination of physical quality showed that.