Drying kinetics of olive stone: A valuable source of biomass obtained in the olive oil extraction

Francisco J. Gómez-de la Cruz, Pedro J. Casanova-Peláez, José M. Palomar-Carnicero and Fernando Cruz-Peragón

Energy, 2014, vol. 75, issue C, 146-152

Abstract: Olive stone is a by-product of the olive grove especially suitable for thermal purpose in industrial, residential and home. To avoid maintenance problems in boilers and to increase the combustion efficiency, olive stone needs to be dried to moisture equilibrium, about 8% (wet basis). The thin layer drying kinetics was investigated in a drying tunnel. Isothermal drying tests were performed with different drying air temperatures: 100, 150, 200 and 250 °C for each sample thickness: 10, 20 and 30 mm. Drying curves were analyzed from the different mathematical models studied by the researchers to date. A new mathematical model is proposed in this work, Two Term Gaussian, which presents the best results of fit. The drying rate is calculated and analyzed. The effective diffusivity values range from 3.98·10−9 to 5.97·10−8 m2/s. Furthermore, the activation energies values were 14,208, 15,356 and 16,270 J/mol for each sample thickness: 10, 20 and 30 mm, respectively.

Keywords: Olive stone; Drying rate; Biomass; Drying kinetics; Effective diffusivity; Mathematical modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214007841
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:75:y:2014:i:c:p:146-152

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2014.06.085

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 ().