Analysis of drying process of silica sand in vertical type fluid bed dryer

Drying or dehydration is the process of removing volatile liquid, such as water, from solid material in order to slow or stop microbial spoilage and chemical reactions. In this study, the effect of particle size, temperature and cake height parameters changes on drying of silica sand in vertical type fluidized bed dryer was investigated experimentally, theoretically and analytically, and the effect of drying parameters on pressure drop was stated. For the estimation of the minimum fluidization rate in the drying of silica sand, the correlations existing in the experiment and the literature were compared and their deviations were examined. The advantage of drying silica sand is that it provides good flow characteristics and better mixing with different additives. Today, sand drying processes are carried out with very different systems. The vertical type fluidized bed dryer used is a stainless steel dryer with a diameter of 108 mm, a product chamber length of 151 mm and a total height of 853 mm. The initial moisture content of the silica sand used in the experiments was determined as % 9.57 according to the wet base. Among the factors affecting the drying process in the drying experiment; temperature, cake height and particle size parameters were examined at 3 different values. When all the test results were compared, it was observed that the moisture loss accelerated with the increase in the drying temperature of the silica sand sample, and the pressure drop increased with the increase in the bed height. It was determined that the minimum fluidization rate varies directly with the particle size and inversely with the temperature.