Advanced Lab Equipment and Modeling Tools for Dryer Design

The capital cost for dryers is high due to long residence times related to drying large diffusion- limited particles and the operating cost is high due to system and control inefficiencies. Throughthe design and development of an Advanced Research Drying Apparatus (aRDA) and a DryerDesign Application (DDA) critical research questions will be addressed and reveal practicalsolutions to a wide range of biomass industry dryer operators and designers. Under the ForestConcepts Analytics® branding we propose to develop and sell a laboratory equipment andsoftware package that will greatly reduce the risk of bringing new materials into an existingdryer facility and will help conversion plant or dryer designers specify an optimal (energyconsumption output material consistency and operation and capital costs) dryer configurationand operation conditions. These tools do not currently exist in the market today. When deployedacross facilities processing 36 million tons of biomass per year the advanced dryers enabled bythe lab equipment and modeling technology in this proposal may save up to $200 million dollarsof energy cost per year due to reduced consumption of electrical power for air handling andfossil fuel thermal energy.