Development of a real-time drying control system for a pneumatic conveying dryer for sawdust in pellet production

Seung Hee Euh, Yun Sung Choi, Yun Sung Nam, Chung Gun Lee, Sang Yeol Lee, Kwang Cheol Oh, Jae Heun Oh and Dae Hyun Kim

Energy, 2018, vol. 161, issue C, 10-16

Abstract: This study presents a real-time drying control system that was developed to control air drying of sawdust in a pneumatic conveying dryer to produce high-grade wood pellets in the range of the target moisture content (MC). The real-time drying control system was installed with moisture sensors to control the ON/OFF periods of the fuel (pellet) supply motor for the sawdust to generate the heat necessary to dry the sawdust to an optimum level of 15% moisture content for pelletizing. The results of the experiment and the simulation showed that the drying efficiency improved when a buffer was introduced instead of using a conventional system, and the average moisture content of the dried sawdust was measured to be about 12.4% in a pneumatic conveying dryer without buffer and about 14.7%–15.2% in the developed real-time drying control system. This study shows that the real-time drying control system could dry the sawdust to the targeted constant moisture content, and the buffer in the pneumatic conveying dryer could improve the drying efficiency according to an increase in the resident time of the sawdust.

Keywords: Buffer; Moisture content; Pneumatic conveying dryer; Real-time drying control system; Sawdust; Wood pellet plant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218313537
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:161:y:2018:i:c:p:10-16

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.07.056

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().