Drying of Porous Materials in a Medium With Variable Potentials

This paper presents an application of the Luikov system of heat and mass transfer equations in dimensionless form to predict the temperature and moisture distributions in a slab of capillary-porous material during drying. The heat and mass potentials of the external medium in the boundary conditions are assumed to vary linearly with time. The method of solution is illustrated by considering the drying of a slab of lumber. Numerical results based on the estimated thermophysical properties of spruce are presented.