Simulation and thermodynamic analysis of a hot-air textile drying process

This paper is concerned with the simulation of drying behavior of wool yarn bobbins and also determination of the optimum operating conditions by using thermodynamic analysis. Firstly, experimental drying behavior of wool yarn bobbins was determined on a hot-air bobbin dryer. Empirical and semi-empirical mathematical models available in the literature were fitted to the experimental data. Then, a multi-layer feed forward neural network structure was used to predict drying behavior of wool bobbins. Afterwards, the first and second law analyses were performed to determine the optimum drying conditions. It was concluded that both the Two Term and Verma et al. models and also the artificial neural network model successfully simulates the drying process. Furthermore, according to the energy and exergy analyses' results, P-eff = 1 bar and T = 100 degrees C were found to be the optimum operating conditions in convective drying process of wool yarn bobbins.