Effectiveness of hybrid drying

The aim of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of convective drying enhanced with microwave and infrared radiation. Four drying methods: convective, convective-microwave, convective-infrared and convective-microwave-infrared, were analyzed with respect to the length of the drying time by securing a good quality of dried products. To this aim the drying curves, the temperature of drying bodies, and the drying rates were determined experimentally and the appraisal of the dried product quality was made optically. The experiments were carried out on the kaolin samples in the form of cylinders. It was stated that a proper combination of these three drying methods may result in a very high drying rate and at the same time in a very good quality of the dried product.