Mass Transfer During Forest Biomass Particles Drying in a Fluidised Bed

The drying of biomass particles is an important industrial process where heat and mass transfer simultaneously occur. Following on from our previous work on convective heat transfer, here we report experimental results obtained by analysing the mass transfer between the gas and the surface of the wood particles, during drying in a mechanically stirred fluidised bed. It is assumed that, during the constant drying rate period, the moisture concentration of the gas on the surface of the particle is constant. The results have allowed us to obtain a correlation between the Sherwood number and the Reynolds number in the range of Rep between 102 and 257; the proposed correlation Shgp = Shgp (Rep) predicts the surface mass transfer coefficient with an average deviation of 30% in relation to experimental data. © 2020 IAgrE