Drying of Industrial Hollow Ceramic Brick: A Numerical Analysis Using CFD

Abstract

The drying process can be defined how unit operation for removing water of one moist solid to an unsaturated gaseous phase due to heat transfer. Numerical simulation emerges like a tool that allows the reproduction of drying experiments using computers and suitable softwares. In this sense, this works aims to predict drying process of an industrial hollow ceramic brick inside the kiln using computational fluid dynamics analysis. For one drying temperature of 60°C, results of the drying and heating kinetics, and moisture content, velocity and temperature distributions are shown and analyzed. A comparison between predicted and experimental data of the moisture content and temperature of the brick along the process was done and a good agreement was obtained.