5. Drying of a slurry droplet consists of two stages, i.e., the saturation drying followed by the granular drying. The saturation drying follows the d2-law until wet granular starts (where internal solids become packed with moisture). During the granular drying, the evaporation rate is proportional to the remaining moisture within the granular. Consider droplet slurry drying in a very long vertical tubular dryer (containing stagnant hot air and providing heating from the tubular wall). The transition diameter that starts wet granular is known.
a. Estimate the heat transfer required to the droplet along the dryer during the saturated drying.
b. Establish a heat transfer model to correlate the temperatures of the wall, air, and droplet, and their associated thermal properties, which would satisfy the heat transfer requirement from (1).
c. Combine (1) and (2) for wet granular drying to estimate the total length of the dryer required.