1st Nordic Drying Conference - NDC'01, Trondheim, Norway, June 27-29, 2001

PULSED FLUID-BED TECHNOLOGY ­ OPPORTUNITIES FOR LOW TEMPERATURE DRYING OF BIOMATERIALS Michel G. Poirier, Tadeusz Kudra and Radu Platon Natural Resources Canada ­ CANMET/Energy Diversification Research Laboratory (CEDRL) 1615, Lionel-Boulet Blvd, P.O. Box 4800, Varennes (Quebec) J3X 1S6 Canada Keywords and Phrases: carrots, chitin, cranberries, spent grains, pulsed fluid-bed dryer ABSTRACT CEDRL designed and built a 0.6 m2 pilot-scale pulsed fluid-bed dryer to demonstrate the advantages of this technology over the competitive ones. Besides the ability to fluidize irregularly shaped particles (examples: fibers, flakes, needles) of wide size distribution, the pulsed fluid-bed dryer allows drying of regularly shaped materials using 30 to 50% less total air flowrate than in a conventional fluid-bed dryer. This pilot-scale dryer was used for drying tests with four biomaterials: carrot cubes, spent grains from breweries, sugar-infused cranberries, and chitin from shrimp shells. The tests were performed in batch mode, at temperatures between 60°C and 180°C. For each material, air flowrate and pulsation frequency were adjusted for optimum fluidization, while temperature regime was selected so as to ensure product quality. Drying results were interpreted in terms of drying kinetics and material temperature.

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