Development of a new Bi-Di correlation for solids drying

In this article, a recently developed Biot number-Dincer number (Bi-Di) correlation for drying applications is presented. The developed correlation is used to determine the moisture diffusivities and moisture transfer coefficients for products subjected to drying. A large number of experimental data taken from various sources in the literature has been utilized for the development of this correlation. Dimensionless moisture distributions were obtained for three regular shaped objects such as slab, cylinder and sphere to verify them with the available experimental measurements. The results show a considerably high agreement between the predicted values from the correlation and measured experimental observations. Thus, the present correlation is considered to be of great importance to design engineers and operators in estimating the moisture transfer parameters in a reasonably simple manner. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.