Kinetics of moisture exchange during convection drying of thin flat wet materials

The kinetics of convective drying of thin wet thermal insulation materials based on the relative drying rate and relative moisture contents has been studied. Processing of experimental data on drying of various wet materials has established that the relative drying rate is related to the relative moisture contents, which are the ratios of the current moisture content to its critical and initial values. Based on the functional dependence of the relative drying rate on the relative moisture contents using the processing of the experiment on drying of ceramics, felt, and asbestos, equations for calculating the drying time are obtained. The dependence of the relative drying rate on the ratio of the current moisture content to the critical one is given. Zonal methods for calculating the drying time are given, based on the drying rate curve. An expression for determining the drying coefficient is developed. Based on the analysis of experimental data on drying porous ceramics, sheet asbestos, and wool felt, graphs of the dependence of the relative drying rate on the ratio of the current moisture content to the initial one are constructed. Dependencies for determining the critical moisture content of the material are given. The considered method of processing experimental data allows obtaining all the main equations for calculating the kinetics of the drying process. A variant of estimating the drying time based on one experiment with a short time interval is given. A comparison of the calculated values according to the equations with the experiment is performed. The spread of the calculated values is in the range of experimental error. The formulas for calculating the drying time obtained without plotting the drying rate curve allow significantly reducing the time of processing the experimental data and can be applied to other materials.