Conventional and modified rotary dryer: Comparison of performance in fertilizer drying

In this work, the performance of a conventional cascading rotary dryer has been compared with a modified configuration, known as a roto-aerated dryer. The results obtained show that for the roto-aerated dryer the residence time was 48% lower, the difference between outlet- and inlet-solids temperature was 1.7–3.3 times higher and the air temperature variations were 1.1–1.7 times higher than for the conventional rotary configuration. All the results of the present work confirm the better performance of roto-aerated dryer. This improvement in drying performance is due to the better gas-particle contact in this new configuration.