Experimental investigation of input parameters on the performance of a commercial Gas-fired tumbler dryer

While the use of tumble dryers has become more popular over the years, they suffer from low efficiencies. Several techniques to reduce the overall energy consumption in textile drying have been explored. These approaches are typically based on heat recovery from the exhaust stream or through optimal control of some of the input operating conditions. This paper focuses on experimentally optimizing the performance of a commercial gas-fired tumble dryer and developing a reduced-order model that can be used as a design tool to predict the drying performance using a representative 11.33-kg capacity gas-fired tumble dryer. The effects of varying airflow, fuel flow rate, mass of the dry textile, initial moisture content, and drum rotational speed are explored. Varying the fuel ratio and the air flow rate had the highest influence on the energy consumption and drying time. Based on these data, reduced-order models were developed and predict the specific moisture extraction ratio, drying efficiency, and drying time with an uncertainty of 9.7%, 11.5%, and 7.1%, respectively. The predictions of these reduced-order models also agreed well with those of theoretical models reported by the authors in previous work. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd