Heat and mass transport in an industrial tunnel dryer: Modeling and simulation applied to hollow bricks

This paper presents a mathematical model and numerical solution to describe the drying of ceramic hollow bricks in a tunnel dryer of cross flow type on an industrial scale. The model is based on mass and energy balances written for a differential volume located in an arbitrary position of the solid material and include the condensation of water. To get the numerical solution of the governing equations the finite volume method and the "upwind" interpolation scheme for the convective terms are used. To validate the methodology, numerical and experimental results for the moisture content and the temperature of brick during the drying on an industrial scale are compared and a good correlation was obtained. Results of moisture content and temperature of the product, temperature, relative humidity and humidity ratio of drying air as a function of drying time and bed length of the dryer are presented and analyzed.