Convective drying of handmade paper

Abstract

The drying of handmade paper at natural and forced air conditions is provided. Research aims at verifying the possibility of reducing the paper's drying time by the use of convective hot air alongside the traditional way (ambient air conditions) and without any losses in paper quality. In this context, paper drying curves were built for different operational conditions to analyze the influence of important variables, such as temperature and air velocity of the drying air, and handmade paper thickness, in process behavior. The applicability of literature correlations to fit the drying curves and their behavior due to the above variables have also been analyzed