Determinação de equações constitutivas no processo de secagem usando Evolução Diferencial

Abstract

The drying process is one of most interesting and important of chemical engineering. Basically, this consists of moisture transfer (water) contained in a material to a fluid (drying air). Mathematically, this process consists of mass and energy balances, associated to constitutive equations. To simulate and analyze this process, it is necessary the determination of these constitutive equations considering experimental data. In this contribution, an inverse problem, proposed to determine the parameters of constitutive equations considering synthetic experimental data, is formulated and solved. To solve this optimization problem, the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is used. In addition, the influence of non-dimensional parameters (Biot’ number, Lewis’ number, initial moisture and λ and Φ parameters) in moisture and temperature profiles also is evaluated. The results showed that the moisture and temperature profiles were more influenced by Biot, Lewis, λ and Φ parameters. Considering noiseless data (σ =0), DE was able to estimate the parameters satisfactorily as shown by the values obtained for the objective function. On the other hand, when noise is considered (σ=5% and σ=10%), DE was able to obtain good estimates.