Multi-scale model for solvent evaporation driven by IR radiation in the coil coating industrial process

Beatriz Sousa Dias

Key information

Authors:

Beatriz Sousa Dias (Beatriz Sousa Dias)

Supervisors:

Jorge Emanuel Pereira Navalho; José Carlos Fernandes Pereira (José Carlos Fernandes Pereira)

Published in

December 9, 2021

Abstract

Drying of polymer-solvent solutions plays an important role in several modern industrial applications, namely on the coil coating industrial process. The ability to foresee the drying behavior of coatings is of extreme importance to the coating industry.\par The present work reports the development of a multi-scale model to predict and control the drying behavior of a coated substrate under infrared (IR) radiation burners. The model accounts for simultaneous heat and mass transfer in a liquid film layer, characterized by a binary polymer-solvent solution. The multi-scale model developed works with two distinguished scales, a micro(coating film) and a macro(oven)-scale, which are connected by an iterative two-way coupling. The model is widely validated with numerical results and inspecting convergence criterion. A good agreement was obtained between the multi-scale predictions and numerical/experimental results from literature. Furthermore, along iterations of the coupling procedure, the solution converges, until it fulfils the convergence parameter prescribed. \par Parametric studies are conducted, to analyze the effect of radiative over convective heating, and to investigate the influence of some oven operating conditions. It follows that drying by means of radiative energy, added by a small contribution of convective heating, is characterized by minimal energy consumption, low drying time, and consequently greater efficiencies. Finally, the parametric study to oven operating conditions provided guidance to achieve good design solutions.