Experimental Investigation of Thermal Conductivity and Specific Heat of the Calcium Phosphate Ore for a Drying Application

This paper discusses an experimental investigation to determine regression models for thermal properties of phosphate particles and to analyze the performances of the phosphate flash dryer. For this purpose, the specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity of phosphate particles were experimentally determined by the modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC) and the modified transient plane source method (MTPS), respectively. Multiple regression models were developed to correlate the specific heat and thermal conductivity to moisture content, particle size, and temperature. Experimental results showed that the measured thermal conductivity and dry specific heat were found in the range of 0.07–0.61 W/m K and 510–630 J/kg·K, respectively. Furthermore, the specific heat increased almost linearly with temperature but decreased with particle size, while the thermal conductivity increased with moisture content and temperature but decreased with particle size. These correlations were integrated to the phosphate flash dryer mathematical model and used to analyze the thermal behavior of phosphate drying. Simulation results were compared to experimental data obtained on a bench-scale dryer, where the model exhibits an average error of 2% and 4% for moisture content and air temperature estimation, showing good fitting for practical data.