Application of inverse concepts to drying

This paper deals with the application of inverse approaches to estimation of drying body parameters. Simultaneous estimation of the thermo physical properties of a drying body as well as the heat and mass transfer coefficients, by using only temperature measurements, is analyzed. A mathematical model of the drying process has been developed, where the moisture content and temperature fields in the drying body are expressed by a system of two coupled partial differential equations. For the estimation of the unknown parameters, the transient readings of a single temperature sensor located in an infinite flat plate, exposed to convective drying, have been used. The Levenberg-Marquardt method and a hybrid optimization method of minimization of the least-squares norm are used to solve the present parameter estimation problem. An analysis of the influence of the drying air velocity, drying air temperature, drying body dimension, and drying time on the thermophysical properties estimation, that enables the design of the proper experiments by using the so-called D-optimum criterion was conducted. In order to perform this analysis, the sensitivity coefficients and the sensitivity matrix determinant were calculated for the characteristic drying regimes and the drying body dimensions.