• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.23-28
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• 2007

Wood fuel must be dried before combustion to minimize the energy loss. Sawdust of Japanese red pine was dried in a direct contact thermal screw dryer to investigate the drying characteristics of sawdust as a raw material for bio-fuel. Average drying rate and energy efficiency was 1.4%/min and 69.23% at $100^{\circ}C$, respectively, and those at $120^{\circ}C$ was 2.1%/min and 71.03%, respectively.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.385-397
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• 2012

Purpose: Drying characteristics of sawdust was studied under batch mode using lab scale microwave dryer. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of material load and microwave output power on drying characteristics of sawdust. Methods: Material load and microwave output power were varied from 23 to 186 g and 530 to 370 W respectively. Different kinetic models were tested to fit the drying rates of sawdust. Similarly, the activation energy was calculated by employing the Arrhenius equation. Results: The drying efficiency increased considerably, whereas the specific energy consumption significantly decreased with increase in material load and microwave output power. The cumulative energy efficiency increased by 9%, and the specific energy consumption decreased by 8% when the material load was increased from 23 to 186 g. The effective diffusivity increased with decrease in material load and increase in microwave output power. The previously published model gave the best fit for data points with $R^2$ and RMSE values of 0.999 and 0.01, respectively. Conclusions: The data obtained from this study could be used as a basis for modeling of large scale industrial microwave dryers for the pellet production.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.30-36
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• 2006

Wood fuel must be dried before combustion to minimize the energy loss. Sawdust of Japanese red pine was dried in a batch type fluidized-bed to investigate the drying characteristics of sawdust as a raw material for bio-fuel. The minimum fluidization air velocity was increased as particle size was increased. It took about 21 minutes and 8 minutes to dry 0.08 m-deep bed of particles with average particle size of 1.3 mm from 100% to 10% moisture content at air temperature of $20^{\circ}C$ and $50^{\circ}C$, respectively.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.82-89
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• 2012

Purpose: The simulation model of a pneumatic conveying drying (PCD) for sawdust was developed and verified with the experiments. Method: The thermal behavior and mass transfer of a PCD were modeled and investigated by comparing the experimental results given by a reference (Kamei et al. 1952) to validate the model. Momentum, energy and mass balance, one dimensional first order ordinary differential equations, were coded and solved into Matlab V. 7.1.0 (2009). Results: The simulation results showed that the moisture content reduced from 194% to 40% (dry basis), air temperature decreased from $512^{\circ}C$ to $128^{\circ}C$ with the particle residence time of 0.7 seconds. The statistical indicators, root mean square error and R-squared, were calculated to be 0.079, and 0.998, respectively, between the measured and predicted values of moisture content. The relative error between the measured and predicted values of the final pressured drop, air temperature, and air velocity were only 8.96%, 0.39% and 1.05% respectively. Conclusions: The predicted moisture content, final temperature, and pressure drop values were in good agreement with the experimental results. The developed model can be used for design and estimation of PCD system for drying of wood dust particles.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.501-502
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• 2012

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.103-111
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• 2009

Moisture is one of the important design factors that affects to the changes of physical properties and air permeability in the composting matrix. This study examines the effects of moisture during the wetting and drying procedure on physical properties like bulk density, particle size, free air space and air permeability in the sawdust used as the bulking agent in composting process. During both procedures of wetting and drying of the water, with increasing moisture content, bulk density and particle size increased, but FAS decreased. In the range of near 40 to 60% moisture content on a wet basis, particle size and FAS in wetting procedure were larger and higher than those in drying procedure. During wetting procedure, pressure drop continuously decreased ranging from near 20 to 60% moisture content, despite of decreasing FAS as a consequence of increasing moisture, and then over the range of 60% moisture content, pressure drop rapidly increased to the saturated moisture condition while the pore space was filled with the water. On the other hand, during drying procedure, pressure drop decreased from the saturated condition to 40% moisture content. In the recommended range of 50 to 60% moisture content for composting operation, pressure drop in wetting procedure were lower than in drying procedure. For the enhancement of the air permeability in the composting matrix, the wetting procedure was proper than the drying procedure, and the optimum moisture content for the efficient composting operation was appeared to be near 60%.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.258-267
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• 2017

In this study, pitch pine (Pinus rigida, PIR) and Mongolian oak (Quercus mongolica, QUM) pellets were fabricated with bark or/and drying waste liquor (DWL) of larch (Larix kaempferi, LAK) as an additive. Based on the results of fuel characteristics of the pellets, optimal conditions for producing the high-quality pellets were provided. In the analysis of chemical composition, bark contained holocelluose and lignin of 90% and over. DWL had 0.1% solid assumed to sugars which are generated from the oven-drying of LAK logs. QUM showed high ash content (2.2%) by containing of bark in the sawdust. Bark and DWL of LAK had high ash content of 4% and over. Calorific values of all specimens and additives were higher than that of the $1^{st}$-grade standard of wood pellets designated by NIFOS (18.0 MJ/kg). PIR and QUM pellets were fabricated with additive of 2 wt% based on the solid weight of oven-dried sawdust using a piston-type flat-die pelletizer, and thus ash content and calorific value of the pellets did not affect by the use of additive. Durability of the pellets increased with the use of additive. Durabilties of pellets, which were fabricated with bark as an additive and DWL as a controller of moisture content for sawdust, did not differ from those of pellets without additives and were lower than those of pellets either with bark or DWL. However, use of both bark and DWL for the production of wood pellets might be favorable because it can make a profit from the collection process of DWL. Based on the results of fuel characteristics of the pellets, QUM and PIR pellets were produced by a flat-die pelletizer. Moisture content (MC), bulk density and durability of the pellets improved with the use of additive. Particularly, sawdust MC of 10% and the addition of bark or DWL for PIR as well as sawdust MC of 12% and the addition of bark for QUM might be optimal conditions for the production of high-quality pellets. Except for the ash content of QUM pellets, other properties of PIR and QUM pellets exceeded the $1^{st}$-grade wood pellets standards of NIFOS.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.496-523
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• 2018

The objective of this study is to evaluate the economic feasibility of two fast pyrolysis and biooil upgrading (FPBU) plants including feed drying, fast pyrolysis by fluidized-bed, biooil recovery, hydro-processing for biooil upgrading, electricity generation, and wastewater treatment. The two FPBU plants are Case 1 of an FPBU plant with steam methane reforming (SMR) for $H_2$ generation (FPBU-HG, 20% yield), and Case 2 of an FPBU with external $H_2$ supply (FPBUEH, 25% yield). The process flow diagrams (PFDs) for the two plants were constructed, and the mass and energy balances were calculated, using a commercial process simulator (ASPEN Plus). A four-level economic potential approach (4-level EP) was used for techno-economic analysis (TEA) under the assumption of sawdust 100 t//d containing 40% water, 30% equity, capital expenditure equal to the equity, $H_2$ price of $1050/ton, and hydrocarbon yield from dried sawdust equal to 20 and 25 % for Case 1 and 2, respectively. TCI (total capital investment), TPC (total production cost), ASR (annual sales revenue), and MFSP (minimum fuel selling price) of Case 1 were $22.2 million, $3.98 million/yr, $4.64 million/yr, and $1.56/l, respectively. Those of Case 2 were $16.1 million, $5.20 million/yr, $5.55 million/yr, and $1.18/l, respectively. Both ROI (return on investment) and PBP (payback period) of Case 1(FPBU-HG) and Case 2(FPBU-EH) were the almost same. If the plant capacity increases into 1,500 t/d for Case 1 and Case 2, ROI would be improved into 15%/yr.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.85-99
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• 2022

Dryers becoming commercially available for experimental and industrial use are classified to general drying oven, hot-air dryer, vacuum dryer, freezing dryer, etc. and kinds of them are various from the function, size and volume, etc. But the moisture measurement is not applied although it is important factor for the quality control and the performance improvement of products, and then now is very passive because the weight is weighed arbitrarily after dry-end. Generally the method for measuring moisture is divided by a direct measurement method and a indirect measurement method, and the former such as the change of weight or volume on the front and rear of separation of moisture, etc. is mainly used. Relatively a indirect measurement is very limited to apply due to utilize measurement apparatuses using temperature conductivity and micro-wave etc. In this research, we easily designed the moisture measurement system using the open-source based Arduino, and monitored moisture fluctuations and weight profiles in the real-time without the effect of external environment. Concretely the temperature-humidity and load cell sensors were packaged into a drying oven and the various change values were measured, and their sensors capable to operate 60℃ and 80℃ were selected to suitable for the moisture sensitive materials and the food dry. And also the performance safety using the organic samples of banana, pear, sawdust could be secured because the changes of evaporation rate as the dry time and temperature, and the measurement values of load cell appeared stable response characteristics through repeated experiments. Hereafter we judge that the reliability can be improved increasingly through the expansion of temperature-humidity range and the comparative analysis with CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) program.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1996.06c
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• pp.701-710
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• 1996

Composting has gained rapid acceptance as a method of recyling relatively dry organic materials such as leaves and brush and , when alternative disposal costs are high, even moist materials such as grass clippings and dewatered sewage sludges. However, as moisture contents rise above 60% , the need for a dry bulking amendment increase the costs of composting , both by direct purchases of amendment and though increased reactor capacity and materials handling requirements. High moisture materials also present increased risks of anaerobic odor formation through reduced oxygen transport (Miller , 1991) . These costs and operational challengers often constrain the opportunities to compost high moisture materials such as agricultural manures. During the last several decades economies of scale in livestock production have been increasing livestock densities and creating manure management challenges throughout the world. This issue is particularly pressing in Korea, where livestock arms typically manage little or no cropland, and the nutrients and boichemical oxygen demand in manure pose a serious threat to water quality. Composting has recently become popular as a means of recycling manure into products for sale off the farm, but bulking amendments (usually sawdust) are expensive designed to minimize bulking agent requirements by using the energy liberated by decompostion. In this context the composting reactor is used as a biological dryer, allowing the repeated use of bulking amendment with several batches of manure.