A Preliminary Study on Strategies for Optimal Fluid-Bed Drying

Abstract

The degradation of product quality during convective drying depends on the temperature and water concentration history of the panicles and drying time. For improving product quality in combination with acceptable operation costs, optimal control of the operation variables is required. In this preliminary study the relevance of dynamic optimal operations for batch-wise fluid-bed drying is explored by simulation. Optimal trajectories of operation variables were calculated for a pilot-plant installation by using a model which concerned the drying history of the panicles and the product quality (inactivation of biological active components). The applied objective function was based on an economic criterion combining product quality and operation costs. Although the advances for the chosen pilot-plant application are moderate, in future studies the potentials and relevance of dynamic optimal operations for drying will be quantified for installations on industrial scale.