Estimation of Binder Segregation in a Porous Slab from the Conductive Drying Rate Curve

The possibility of estimating the quality of dried material from the conductive drying rate curve was investigated, taking the binder segregation in a porous slab as an indicator of quality. A new binder segregation model was proposed for conductive drying of a porous slab by expansion of the authors' previous model for convective drying. Results calculated with the proposed model from a measured drying rate curve showed satisfactory agreement with the authors' previous experimental results using polyvinyl alcohol aqueous solution as the binder. The success of the proposed model in reproducing the experimental results obtained under limited conditions suggests the possibility of developing a general model for binder segregation during conductive drying and may also be an example of the possibility of estimating the quality of dried material from the drying rate curve, which is necessary for the design of drying equipment.