PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF A LABORATORY DRYING KILN DESIGNED WITH AND WITHOUT BAFFLES

This research tests whether there is asignificant difference between a kiln designed withoutbaffles and one designed with either top baffles, or topand lateral baffles, or top, lateral, horizontal andvertical baffles. The influence of baffles on the kilnperformance was analyzed, by using bothexperimental and simulation methods. Theexperimental method was used to measure the meanair velocity through active channels. On the otherhand, the simulation method was necessary to find outthe influence of the previously measured mean airvelocity on the drying time and energy consumption.The simulation was performed using TORKSIMsoftware. There was no significant difference betweena kiln designed without baffles and one with topbaffles. But, there was a significant differencebetween a kiln designed without baffles and onedesigned with either top and lateral baffles or top,lateral, horizontal and vertical baffles. We concludedthat the blocking of all passive channels from a dryingkiln improves its performance from two points of view:drying time and drying cost per one cubic meter ofwood.