CFD SIMULATIONS OF THE CONVECTIVE DRYING OF IRON ORE TAILINGS

A granular Eulerian multiphase model coupled with heat and mass transfer was used to simulate the convective drying process of iron ore tailings. Convective drying experiments were conducted at laboratory scale to obtain drying kinetics data, from which a correlation for the mass transfer coefficient was derived for implementation in the CFD simulations. The CFD model was evaluated under different air temperatures and velocities, and the predicted moisture content showed good agreement with experimental measurements, with an average RMSE of 5.8 x 10^-3 for five drying conditions. The accurate representation of the mass transfer coefficient provided in this study constitutes a key input for reliable CFD simulations of drying equipment for the mining industry.