Abstract
Cost-effective biomass drying is a key challenge for energy recovery from biomass by direct combustion, gasification, and pyrolysis. The aim of the present study was to optimize the process of biomass drying using hot air convection (HA), infrared (IR), and combined drying systems (IR-HA). The specific energy consumption (SEC) decreased significantly by increasing the drying temperature using convective drying, but higher air velocities increased the SEC. Similarly, increasing air velocity in the infrared dryer resulted in a significant increase in SEC. The lowest SEC was recorded at 7.8 MJ/kg at an air velocity of 0.5 m/s and an IR intensity of 0.30 W/cm2, while a maximum SEC (20.7 MJ/kg) was observed at 1.0 m/s and 0.15 W/cm2. However, a significant reduction in the SEC was noticed in the combined drying system. A minimum SEC of 3.8 MJ/kg was recorded using the combined infrared-hot air convection (IR-HA) drying system, which was 91.7% and 51.7% lower than convective and IR dryers, respectively. The present study suggested a combination of IR and hot air convection at 60 °C, 0.3 W/cm2 and 0.5 m/s as optimum conditions for efficient drying of biomass with a high water content.
Highlights
The utilization of bio-resources has been widely discussed to replace non-renewable resources such as fossil fuel, which is limited and results in undesirable emissions that largely contribute to climate change and global warming [1]
The increasing temperature from 40 to 60 ◦ C resulted in a reduction of the drying time by 22.2%, 21.7%, and 20.8% at 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0 m/s, respectively
The present study evaluated three drying systems, namely hot air convection, IR, and a combined IR-hot air convection drying (HA) for the drying of tomato slices as a model high water content biomass
Summary
The utilization of bio-resources has been widely discussed to replace non-renewable resources such as fossil fuel, which is limited and results in undesirable emissions that largely contribute to climate change and global warming [1]. Waste biomasses have been discussed as a sustainable feedstock for chemicals and energy production. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) is a biodegradable bio-polyester that can be accumulated by different bacterial cells grown on agro-industrial wastes [2,3,4]. The contribution of biomass, as one of the world’s major sustainable energy sources [5], in global energy consumption was estimated to reach up to 50% by the year 2050 [6,7]. Wang et al [16]
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