Agro-industrial Wastes: Drying Kinetics

CINTIA S. NAVAS; D. GRANADOS; M.M. REBOREDO

Tinos

Conferencia; 3rd International Conference on Sustainable Solid Waste Management; 2015

The productive activities of Argentina, olive and wine industries, generate large amounts of agro-industrial waste which include the olive wet husk, the olive pits and grape stalks.  These residues can be used as filler of polymeric composite materials. In order to prepare the residues for that use, a drying process is needed. In this work the drying kinetics of agro-industrial waste was studied. It was carried out  at three different temperatures: 60, 80 and 100 °C, for each material. The experimental results determined that the olive pit is the material which has higher moisture  value  (62%), followed by the  grape stalks(45%)and finally  by  the olive wet husk(33%). Six empirical mathematical models were selected to describe and compare the drying kinetics of  the  agro-industrial wastes. Among the tested models used to describe the drying kinetics of wastes, Logarithmic and Page models  were those that presented the  best fit. The moisture loss was described and  the effective diffusivity was estimated on the basis of the obtained results, giving values in the range of  5x10-6   for  the grape stalks, 4.09x10-7  for the olive wet husk and 5x10-6 m2/s for the olive pits. This study suggests that the olive wet husk  shows better properties during drying process, followed by grape stalks and the olive pits, for their incorporation into polymeric composites.