This book provides recent advances in research on drying of particulate and porous materials. It is based on a selection of papers presented at the XI Polish Drying Symposium 2005. The contributions cover theoretical, as well as experimental and modeling research on heat and mass transfer processes during drying of porous material and fluidized beds. The book is a pioneering contribution to the science and technology of drying of particulate solids.

This book, Drying and Wetting of Building Materials and Components, provides a collection of recent contributions in the field of drying and wetting in porous building materials. The main benefit of the book is that it discusses some of the most important topics related to the drying and wetting processes, namely, innovations and trends in drying science and technology, drying mechanism and theory, equipment, advanced modelling, complex simulation and experimentation. At the same time, these topics will be going to the encounter of a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines. The book is divided in several chapters that intend to be a resume of the current state of knowledge for benefit of professional colleagues.

Heat and Mass Transfer in Drying of Porous Media offers a comprehensive review of heat and mass transfer phenomena and mechanisms in drying of porous materials. It covers pore-scale and macro-scale models, includes various drying technologies, and discusses the drying dynamics of fibrous porous material, colloidal porous media and size-distributed particle system. Providing guidelines for mathematical modeling and design as well as optimization of drying of porous material, this reference offers useful information for researchers and students as well as engineers in drying technology, food processes, applied energy, mechanical, and chemical engineering.

This monograph presents, for the first time, a unified and comprehensive introduction to some of the basic transport properties of porous media, such as electrical and hydraulic conductivity, air permeability and diffusion. The approach is based on critical path analysis and the scaling of transport properties, which are individually described as functions of saturation. At the same time, the book supplies a tutorial on percolation theory for hydrologists, providing them with the tools for solving actual problems. In turn, a separate chapter serves to introduce physicists to some of the language and complications of groundwater hydrology necessary for successful modeling. The end-of-chapter problems often indicate open questions, which young researchers entering the field can readily start working on. This significantly revised and expanded third edition includes in particular two new chapters: one on advanced fractal-based models, and one devoted to the discussion of various open issues such as the role of diffusion vs. advection, preferential flow vs. critical path, universal vs. non-universal exponents for conduction, and last but not least, the overall influence of the experimental apparatus in data collection and theory validation. "The book is suitable for advanced graduate courses, with selected problems and questions appearing at the end of each chapter. [...] I think the book is an important work that will guide soil scientists, hydrologists, and physicists to gain a better qualitative and quantitative understanding of multitransport properties of soils." (Marcel G. Schaap, Soil Science Society of America Journal, May-June, 2006)