Efficiency of tray dryer moisture removal: Experimental and AI studies

Drying is an essential procedure in many sectors, including saltwater feed solutions. In this study, a set of experiments is conducted to analyze the impact of various operating factors, comprising the speed of the air fan, drying duration, power of the heater, and salinity concentration of the saltwater solution, on the moisture removal efficiency (MRE) of the tray dryer. MRE rises rapidly in the first 30 minutes of drying, then slows down. Higher heater power improves MRE at every air speed, while a higher air fan speed diminishes drying time. MRE reduces as the salinity of the feed rises. With constant heater power, MRE increases as drying time progresses, showing the largest rise during the initial 60 minutes. The highest MRE is attained at 1200 W heater power during this timeframe. The other key aspect of this research involves developing intelligence-based models using the present experimental data. The input variables consist of the four specified operational factors, while the output is MRE. Among 240 experimental data points, the multilayer perceptron using radial basis functions (MLP) showed the best outcomes, obtaining a MAPE of 0.000013% during training and 2.62% during testing, an RMSE of 0.0134 for training and 0.479 for testing, along with R² values of 1.0 (training) and 90.7% (testing). Sensitivity analysis revealed that MRE positively correlates with drying time, heater power, and air fan speed, whereas feed salinity exhibited a negative effect. These results offer practical guidance for optimizing the tray dryer efficiency.