(Image courtesy of CARD.)
Industrial drying processes are vital to the production and manufacturing of moist, porous materials such as those used in food products, paper and building materials, as well as powders and other bulk dry chemicals.
Drying accounts for a significant amount of the energy used in these industries, and as much as two percent of the 100 million BTUs (or quads) of energy used in the U.S. each year is wasted by industrial drying processes.
A new multi-university research center, however, aims to dramatically reduce the amounts of energy and water used in industrial drying processes, while also bringing new innovations into the field of drying.
The Center for Advanced Research in Drying (CARD) will be led by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in conjunction with researchers from the University if Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and various industry collaborators.
The research projects taking place at CARD will be carried out by the faculty, graduate and undergraduate students at both WPI and the University of Illinois coming from disciplines including engineering, agricultural science and other STEM fields. This means that students at both institutions will have valuable opportunities to work with industry professionals, gaining experience in applying their education to solve real problems.
WPI researchers will focus on the engineering aspects of drying, while Illinois will turn its efforts toward food and agriculture, as well as developing sensor technologies.
Current active research projects include:
- Development of innovative impinging jets that will enable delicate items to be dried more efficiently without incurring damage.
- Designing new sensors to measure moisture levels and other material properties to allow for better control of drying.
- Studies of how product properties are changed during drying processes.
The Center for Advanced Research on Drying will develop technologies to significantly reduce the energy needed by a wide range of industries to dry moist, porous materials, such as pasta.
In addition to improving the efficiency of drying processes and reducing waste, a central goal of the center is to help manufacturers produce better products by giving industries more control over the drying processes. The quality of many products is affected by how quickly or evenly drying takes place, or by the methods used to extract moisture.
The center will also conduct research on other processes that involve heat and mass transfer, such as heating, cooling, freezing and frying.
“The goal of CARD is to improve the efficiency of those processes by 10 percent, which would save 0.2 quads of energy each year," said Jamal Yagoobi, head of WPI’s department of mechanical engineering, and the inaugural director of CARD. "Since steam is the prime media used in industrial heating and drying, by making drying more efficient, the center also aims to help reduce annual water usage in the United States by about 10 billion kilograms, or the equivalent of the water in 4,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”
CARD is funded by the NSF through its Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers program (I/UCRC), as well as receiving funding from the associated I/CURC corporate members. As the only major research center at a U.S. university that focuses on industrial drying, CARD has also been named a partner in one of the US National Network for Manufacturing Innovation Institutes.
CARD is also a member of the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, which brings together nearly 200 academic, industry and non-profit partners to pursue advances in manufacturing.
For more information, visit the Center for Advanced Research in Drying website.