Center for Advanced Research in Drying » Enhancement of Drying Rate of Moist Porous Media with Electric Field

Overview

Traditional drying techniques are associated with conductive, convective, radiative, and/or dielectric heating, either alone or in different combinations. The most common technique, convective air-drying, is energy-intensive and relatively inefficient. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying might potentially be an effective method to enhance the drying efficiency of porous, moist materials.

Our project is to use one of the EHD forces, namely, dielectrophoretic (DEP) force, to extract the water vapor from the liquid phase in porous media to enhance the evaporation rate in a drying process. Dielectrophoresis is translational motion of neutral matter caused by polarization effects in a non-uniform electric field. The use of DEP force to influence particle motion is well known in life science research, where it is commonly used for separation or manipulation of cells etc. It can be also be used to exert forces on neutral particles or bubbles suspended in a liquid medium, which makes it especially suitable for boiling heat transfer enhancement.