Abstract
The improvement of the design and operation of energy conversion systems is a theme of global concern. As an energy intensive operation, industrial agricultural product drying has also attracted significant attention in recent years. Taking a novel industrial corn drying system with drying capacity of 5.5 t/h as a study case, based on existing exergoeconomic and exergetic analysis methodology, the present work investigated the exergetic and economic performance of the drying system and identified its energy use deficiencies. The results showed that the average drying rate for corn drying in the system is 1.98 gwater/gdry matter h. The average exergy rate for dehydrating the moisture from the corn kernel is 345.22 kW and the exergy efficiency of the drying chamber ranges from 14.81% to 40.10%. The average cost of producing 1 GJ exergy for removing water from wet corn kernels is USD 25.971, while the average cost of removing 1 kg water is USD 0.159. These results might help to further understand the drying process from the exergoeconomic perspective and aid formulation of a scientific index for agricultural product industrial drying. Additionally, the results also indicated that, from an energy perspective, the combustion chamber should be firstly optimized, while the drying chamber should be given priority from the exergoeconomics perspective. The main results would be helpful for further optimizing the drying process from both energetic and economic perspectives and provide new thinking about agricultural product industrial drying from the perspective of exergoeconomics.
Highlights
IntroductionDrying is the process of removing moisture from natural products (e.g., agricultural products, wood and fruit) or industrial materials (e.g., lignite, ceramics and medical materials) down to a specific moisture content, while ensuring prime product quality, high throughput and minimal operational costs [1]
Drying is the process of removing moisture from natural products or industrial materials down to a specific moisture content, while ensuring prime product quality, high throughput and minimal operational costs [1]
The results showed that the uncertainties of the experimental data ranged from 0.6 to 3.3, indicating that the reliability of the data used for calculating the indicators adopted in the present work was good, in addition to confirming reproducibility [34]
Summary
Drying is the process of removing moisture from natural products (e.g., agricultural products, wood and fruit) or industrial materials (e.g., lignite, ceramics and medical materials) down to a specific moisture content, while ensuring prime product quality, high throughput and minimal operational costs [1]. Drying is a highly energy-intensive operation in grain industrial production. According to the literature [2,3,4], drying operations consume about 10–25% of national energy use each year. The existing literature has reported new drying technologies and processes for specific materials, few works have reported on industrial-scale drying systems, especially for grain drying. Different kinds of energy resources (e.g., natural gas, coal) provide the corresponding energy for maintaining the operation of the drying system. Inherent to this process, energy is wasted in the various devices involved due to the irreversibility of energy conversion [10]
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