The drying of soybean seeds in countercurrent and concurrent moving bed dryers

The aim of this work was to analyze the simultaneous heat and mass transfer between air and soybean seeds in countercurrent and concurrent moving bed dryers by simulation. The technique chosen was based on modeling from mass and energy conservation equations for the fluid and particulate phases. The equilibrium, heat transfer and mass transfer equations were taken from specific studies. The equation representing drying kinetics was obtained by means of a thin-layer study, whereas the equilibrium equations was chosen from rival model discrimination, based on nonlinearity measures. Hence, the model parameters were defined by the respectives studies. The profiles for temperature and humidity of the fluid and the temperature and moisture of the seeds were obtained by numerical solution of the model. This model consisted of ordinary differential equations and the solution was obtained by a specific code. The simulated results indicated a significant amount of heat transfer at the beginning of the bed in both flow configurations for different inlet air temperatures.