The paper industry uses cylinder dryers that employ steam to heat the paper web moving over the cylinder outer walls. As steam condenses, the condensate is accumulated inside the cylinder dryers. The condensate is evacuated using either stationary or rotary siphons. The form of condensate motion occurring inside the cylinder can be puddling, cascading or rimming depending on the size of the cylinder dryer, the rotating speed, the amount of condensate, and the surface finish of the cylinder dryer inner wall with or without ribs or grooves. The behavior of the condensate inside the cylinder dryers affects the heat transfer through the cylinder wall, the torque and power requirements of the dryer, and the performance of the condensate evacuation via siphons. To help improve the drying performance, it is important to understand the fundamental thermal-fluid physics in the rotational dryer. Thus, the objectives of this study are (a) to investigate the dynamic two-phase flow and heat transfer behavior inside the rotational paper dryer at different rotational speeds; (b) to employ three different multiphase computational models, the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model, the Mixture model, and the Eulerian-Eulerian (E-E) model, and compare their results. The results show that the E-E model better captures the physics of condensate behavior inside the dryer. It also predicts very well the rimming speed in comparison with the empirical correlation although it takes longer computational time than the VOF model. The mixture model doesn’t adequately capture the cascade and rimming physics due to excessive liquid dispersion. Based on the results, the categorization of the thermal-flow behavior of the liquid layer is expanded from the traditional three phases to five phases: puddling, transitional cascading, cascading, transitional rimming, and steady rimming. A detailed analysis of the rotating liquid layer behavior and its corresponding wall heat transfer passing through each phase is presented. Generally, the heat transfer increases during the initial puddling period, followed by oscillatory attenuation during the cascade period, finally reaches steady state after rimming is achieved.
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