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Diffusion-optimized convection dryers

for the coating industry
By F. Durst, G. Zheng, H. Soltanzadeh und T. Brunner, FMP Technology GmbH
A DRYING RATE SEVERAL TIMES HIGHER THAN EXISTING RATES.

Thermal drying is a process widely employed in the coating

industry, where thin liquid films are coated on substrates of different materials and are subsequently dried to yield solid coated layers to cover the substrate. The latter confer specific properties on the coated material that fulfill protective, cosmetic or
functional tasks, depending on the particular application. Various
coating techniques are currently applied and these are described
in the literature, in summary papers and in books [16]. These
publications demonstrate that film coating has progressed over
the years, yielding new coating methods and their introduction
into industry. Among these, the slot coating technique has
attracted considerable attention owing to its wide range of applications and also to the high quality of layers that it can coat.
Most coating processes are nowadays well understood and available theoretical treatments support coating applications in various areas. Similar supports are not available in the field of drying
since theoretical treatments of drying have not been reported.
Therefore, until now, improvements in the drying process of coated, thin liquid films had to be based on engineering intuition. This
led to the belief that the addition of more heat will yield faster drying. However, this is not necessarily the case. If the heat is supplied to evaporate the solvent at a certain rate and no corresponding means are in place to remove the vapor at the same rate, the
addition of heat might only increase the temperature of the coating fluid and it might even decrease the drying rate. Hence a
deeper understanding of the drying process is needed to facilitate
improved drying processes for the coating industry.
FMP Technology GmbH has been working, for some years, to
develop the diffusion-optimized convection drying technique for
the coating industry. Suitable dryers can be laid out, designed,
built and installed that possess drying rates several times higher
than those of dryers currently employed in the coating industry.
High energy savings can be achieved with these new dryers if

their performance is compared with existing dryers for the same

drying rates. Faster coating speeds can be obtained with diffusionoptimized convection dryers if these dryers possess the same
length as existing dryers.
DIFFUSION-OPTIMIZED CONVECTION DRYERS. Through computa-

tional work, FMP Technology GmbH elucidated the flow effects

that improve the mass transfer performance of airflows applied
in dryers. For this purpose, numerical computations, after some
analytical studies, were carried out for the geometry illustrated
in Fig. 1. For this geometry and for a hot flow passing through
the indicated porous medium, very good heat and mass transfer rates could be achieved. This was computed for the flow
geometry in Fig. 1, which shows not only the computational
domain, but also the boundary conditions employed. The geometry shows that a porous medium plate was used above the wet
film surface to be dried. This arrangement yields a temperature
gradient between the porous plate and the wet film surface, and
also ensures that there is a flow available parallel to the film
that removes the moisture that is evaporated in the drying
process. Through these two processes production and transport
of moisture very good mass transfer rates are produced. Values
are reached that are several times higher than those of conventional convection dryers employed in the coating industry.

Fig. 1: Schematic of a drying element implemented with a porous plate.

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Element length, L = 41 [mm];

Inlet, B = 30 [mm];
Lip length, l = 3 [mm];
Porous plate thickness, t = 3.5 [mm];
Permeability coefficient, k = 167x10-12 [m2].
Element height, H = 8 [mm];
Outlet, b = 2.5 [mm];
Gap distance, d = 3 [mm];
Porosity, = 0.55 [-];
Fig. 4: Local diffusive mass flux (red curve) and its mean value (green curve) at

Fig. 1 illustrates the boundary conditions for one drying element

inside a diffusion-optimized dryer. These kinds of drying elements are periodically connected to each other and a number of
drying elements are used to build up a dryer, this number being
dependent on the total length of the dryer.
Simulations were carried out based on the schematic geometry
shown in Fig. 1, where air blows into the region above the wet
film with a uniform velocity and leaves through outlet slots at the
left- and right-hand side of each drying element. For the computations, the temperature of the bottom side was fixed at Tb, where
evaporation occurs. The temperature of the inflow and the temperature of the top walls were also taken to be constant, Tt = 200 C.
The coated substrate moved with a web speed, Uw, from the left to
the right side of Fig. 1. For the numerical simulations, a zero pressure jump as a boundary condition was imposed for the connecting interfaces between the ends of the elements.
Taking air as an ideal gas, two-dimensional steady laminar flow
simulations were conducted using the commercial CFD software
CCM+ of adapco GmbH [7]. Various parameters of the drying
process could be computed in the numerical simulations performed, including velocity, pressure, temperature, density and viscosity of the airflow above the wet film surface. The numerical predictions carried out yielded the results summarized in Figs. 28.
The predictions carried out resulted in mass transfer rates that
were much higher than those of existing dryers. These results are
obvious if one considers the high temperature and density gradients that can be achieved above the wet film surface. These result
in a high diffusive mass flux at the evaporation interface.

the evaporation interface for the drying element implemented with porous plate
for the case of Tw = 20 C, Tt = 200 C, Uw = 0 m/s and Vin = 1.0 m/s.

Fig. 4 shows that a constant diffusive mass transport is predicted over the major part of the drying region. It also shows that
there are two negative peaks of the predicted diffusive mass
transport at the ends of the drying element. These end effects
were introduced by the flow suction through the slots at the two
ends of the drying element. In order to confirm this conclusion
drawn from the numerical predictions, another flow geometry
that excluded the ends, as shown in Fig. 5, was used to carry
out a second set of numerical computations. This figure shows
a porous medium plate set up for the incoming hot air, with the
air leaving in the horizontal direction at the left- and right-hand
sides of the sketched channel. Predictions for this set-up yielded mass transfer results that were constant over the whole drying region considered due to the exclusion of the end effect.
This is shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 5: Schematic of a drying element implemented with porous plate,

without end effect.

Element length, L = 100 [mm]; Element height, H = 12 [mm];

Gap distance, d = 3 [mm];
Porous plate thickness, t = 3.5 [mm]; Porosity, = 0.55 [-];
Permeability coefficient, k = 167x10-12 [m2]

Fig. 2: Temperature distribution inside the drying element for the case
of Tw = 20 C, Tt = 200 C, Uw = 0 m/s and Vin = 1.0 m/s.

Fig. 6: Temperature distribution inside the drying element for the case of Tw = 20 C,
Tt = 200 C, Uw = 0 m/s and Vin = 1.0 m/s.

Fig. 3: Density distribution inside the drying element for the case
of Tw = 20 C, Tt = 200 C, Uw = 0 m/s and Vin = 1.0 m/s.

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Utilizing the CFD program CCM+, computations could be carried

out for various conditions and it was found that the mass transfer rates vary strongly with the distance of the porous plate with

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Fig. 7: Density distribution inside the drying element for the case of Tw = 20 C, Tt =
200 C, Uw = 0 m/s and Vin = 1.0 m/s.

Fig. 11: Slot die under coating operation and vertical FMP dryer

Several internal and external runs demonstrated the performance of individual drying elements, shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 8: Local diffusive mass flux (green curve) and its mean value (red curve) at
the evaporation interface for the drying element implemented with a porous
plate, without end effect, for the case of Tw = 20 C, Tt = 200 C, Uw = 0 m/s and
Vin = 1.0 m/s.

respect to the liquid film, the flow velocity through the porous
medium and also the temperature gradient between the liquid
film and the porous plate. It is these parameters that can be used
in practice to yield good drying rates for coated films on different
substrate materials.
APPROACH TO SOLUTION. TEST SECTION AND EQUIPMENT. Experi-

mental investigations of the diffusion-optimized convection dryer

using 10 diffusion-optimized convection dryer elements (dryer
length 1 m) were carried out to confirm the theoretical findings.
Such a dryer is shown in Fig. 9.

Air exhaust

Air inflow

Fig. 9: Photograph of a 1 mr FMP dryer set-up for the verification experiments

Fig. 10: One element of the diffusion-optimized convection dryer showing the
inlet and outlet openings for the airflow.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. To obtain experimental information on

the performance of the FMP dryer, the speed of coating of the rollto-roll system was varied until, at the end of the dryer, drying of
the total amount of solvent in the wet film was ensured. Hence it
was possible to determine the drying performance by using the
residence time in the dryer as:

where = Drying rate per unit area, m = Amount of solvent

applied per unit area, = Web speed and L= Length of dryer.
The FMP dryer of 1 m length, shown in
Fig. 1, was finally integrated into a rollto-roll coating test rig of FMP TECHNOLOGY GMBH to demonstrate its drying
performance experimentally. At the
lower end of the dryer, a slot die was
installed, to coat the surface of a photographic paper sheet, as shown in Fig. 11.
With this arrangement, wet films of preestablished thicknesses were coated on
the paper and subsequently fed into the
dryer, as illustrated in Fig. 12. In Fig. 12,
the coating nozzle is also shown under
coating operating conditions. The nozzle was applied in different coating
modes and at various weight ratings.
The experiments were performed in Fig. 12: Test rig at FMP
such a way that the coating speed was Technology GMBH for
adjusted until, for a certain weight of coating and drying experia liquid film, complete drying was ments
achieved at the end of the 1 m modular
drying element. Leaving the mass flow through the coating die
constant, the coating speed could be changed and for all speeds
the liquid film could be dried in the experiments. This is a nice
feature of the diffusion-optimized convection dryer introduced in
this paper. Initial experimental investigations on the drying of
pure water were performed. The drying rate measurements are
shown in Fig. 13, illustrating that the diffusion-optimized convection dryer allows drying rates that are 45 times existing drying
rates known for convection dryers from several manufacturers.
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The introduced diffusion optimized convection dryer elements

can easily be combined to dryer-units as indicated in Fig. 9. However, is also possible to combine the elements with conventional
dryers/heaters, already employed in coating lines. Hence, the
introduced dryer elements can be inserted, piece-by-piece, into
existing dryers of the coating industry. 
REFERENCES

Fig. 13: Results for drying rate measured for pure water coated
on a photographic paper substrate

CONCLUSION. The convection dryers nowadays employed in the

coating industry possess low drying rates, poor energy efficiencies and use high flow rates of air to dry thin layers of aqueous fluids. To improve dryers of this kind requires the diffusive transport
of the evaporated solvent to be enhanced. In optimized diffusion
dryers, it is necessary to ensure that the rates of vapor production
and vapor transport are made equal.
Because of the above criterion, diffusion-optimized convection
dryers are needed in the coating industry and this paper summarizes research and development work to make such dryers available. This work resulted in dryers that can operate with an efficiency several times higher than that achievable with existing
dryers, as outlined in the paper. It is stressed that diffusion-optimized convection dryers can save energy costs not practically
achievable in any other way. Very short dryers can be built and
limitations of coating speeds, due to dryer length, can be eliminated. Diffusion-optimized convection dryers permit the energy costs
for drying of thin liquid films to be drastically reduced. The hot air
flow velocity, the distance of the porous plate to the wet film surface and the airflow temperature used can be employed to control
the drying rate.
FMP Technology GmbH can deliver drying elements up to 2 m in
width. For wider substrates, shorter pieces can be connected to
each other or elements of special design need to be considered.

Fig. 14: Combinations of diffusion optimized convection dryer elements with infrared heaters. IR-Modul = IR-module; FMP Trocknungsmodul = FMP drying module

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[3] K. J. Ruschak, Coating flows, Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 17: 65-89, 1985.
[4] S. F. Kistler & P. M. Schweizer, Liquid Film Coating; Scientific
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[6] A. A. Tracton, Coating Technology Handbook, Taylor and
Francis, 2005.
[7] Documentation of STAR-CCM+ V 8.04, cd-adapco.
FMP Technology GMBH
D-91058 Erlangen
www.fmp-technology.com
At ICE USA: Hall A6, Booth 566