Heating/Drying Using Particulate Medium : A Review Part I. General and Heat transfer parameters

This paper presents an Overview of particulate medium drying and heat treating of cereal grains. While the conventional air drying of grains is well documented, studies on the drying of grains using heated granular medium do not appear to exist. The scientific study of the different aspects of drying with a heated granular medium began in the early 1970's. Progress on the utilization of particle-to-particle heat transfer was slow as evidenced by the fact that there is no commercial dryer using the method as of today. The first section of this paper deals with conduction heating and how it led to the use of granular medium in heating the grain. Starting with the earliest work on conduction heating reported by Kelly ( 1939), the developments in the heating of grain using granular media is discussed. For decades since Kelly's report, work in the subject area dealt mostly with the theoretical aspects of solid-to-solid heat transfer. Thus, in the succeeding section of the paper, heat transfer parameters and mechanisms involved in the process are thoroughly investigated.