Influence of Air Humidity on Drying of Individual Iron Ore Pellets

The influence of air humidity on drying is investigated at four inlet air dew points; T dp = 273, 292, 313, and 333 K. A numerical model taking into account capillary transport of liquid and internal evaporation is applied to a spherical geometry representative for an individual iron ore pellet. Drying simulations are carried out with commercial computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software and the boundary conditions are calculated from the surrounding fluid flow. The results indicate that the effect of air humidity arises from the start of the first drying period, that is, the surface evaporation period, whereas the difference is reduced at the end of the period due to a prolonged stage of constant rate drying attained at high saturations. At low saturations, there is no constant drying stage because the surface becomes locally dry before the pellet temperature has stabilized at the wet bulb temperature. The magnitudes of the drying rates and moisture contents are rather similar at the time when internal drying becomes dominating (i.e., when the total surface evaporation rate is zero) for the respective dew points, yet the drying time is increased at high saturations. It was also found that the moisture gradients at the surface and inside the pellet increased with drying rate.