• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 1998

Microwave heating and drying processes have been well established in various industrial applications. Feasibilities of successful application of microwave drying to many material have been shown on the laboratory or pilot-plant scale. The microwave drying behavior of plating sludge are considered in this paper. The plating sludge containing 70%, 80% and 90% water exposed to microwave power at 2,450 MHz, 700W. An experimental microwave drying apparatus was designed and constructed to monitor weight loss during drying. By studying the drying characteristic curve, the moisture in sludge was almost classified into two categories : free moisture and intestinal moisture. And the critical moisture contents at which the drying rate ceases to be constant were from 10.1 to 10.5%. A simple drying model is proposed which may be used to describe drying behavior of plating sludge. The constant rate and the falling rate periods in microwave drying were addressed separately. From the eqation of constant rate period the drying rate constants decreased exponentially with increasing depth. Microwave heating compared with conventional heating offered higher heating rates from 9 to 16 times. Therefore, microwave drying process can be effective in removing moisture from plating sludge.