AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON DRYING KINETICS OF 15 KINDS OF CUT TOBACCO IN THE TG DRIER

摘要

The convection drying is widely used in tobacco process. The properties of drying medium and materials are key factors which affect the drying rate of tobacco materials. The research on the drying kinetics of cut tobacco is the basic of characterizing of tobacco drying rate, which is beneficial to optimize the parameters in the tobacco process. In this study, the effect of temperature（80℃～120℃） and humidity of drying medium （0kg/kg～0.4kg/kg）on drying process were investigated in the on-line drying equipment (based on the TG method) for 15 kinds of cut tobacco, and the drying kinetics model was found based on the modified Fick’s second law. The effective diffusivity Deff was calculated by non-linear fitting method, which can describe the drying process. The Apparent activation energy Ea can be obtained from the effective diffusivity Deff in the different temperatures, which can be used to compare the different drying characteristic of tobacco. The values of activation energy E0 are obtained between 20.01 and 26.06 for 15 kinds of cut tobacco from the drying kinetics model. The results indicated that the types of cut tobacco affected significantly its drying characteristics.