A COMPARISON OF THE FINITE-ELEMENT AND CONTROL-VOLUME NUMERICAL-SOLUTION TECHNIQUES APPLIED TO TIMBER DRYING PROBLEMS BELOW THE BOILING-POINT

Drying is a process which involves heat and mass transfer both inside the porous material, where a phase change in moisture occurs from the liquid to the gaseous state, and in the external boundary layer of the convected hot dry air, which heats the porous medium. The equations which govern this process consist of three tightly coupled, highly non-linear partial differential equations for the unknown system variables of moisture content, temperature and pressure. Due to the inherently complex boundary conditions and intricate physical geometries in any practical drying problem, an analytical solution is not possible. In order to obtain a transient drying solution it is necessary to resort to a numerical technique. The numerical solution techniques which were employed in this research were the finite element method and the control volume method. The transient numerical results were compared and contrasted for two timber drying problems, first, at a dry bulb temperature of 50 degrees C, and secondly, at 80 degrees C, both cases being below the boiling point of water.