Vegetable Fiber Drying: Theory, Advanced Modeling and Application

This chapter aims to study the drying of sisal fibers. The interest in this type of material is related to its high mechanical performance. Several important topics such as theory, experiments, lumped and distributed mathematical modeling, and technological applications of fibers are presented and discussed. Emphasis is given to advanced distributed modeling that describes the heat and mass transfer in a wet fiber bed during drying. The model includes different effects such as bed porosity, fiber and bed moisture, coupling between heat and mass transport, and conduction, convection, and evaporation heat transfer. Results of fiber drying and heating kinetics, temperature distribution, and water vapor concentration in the fibrous bed are presented, compared with experimental data and analyzed.