ABSTRACT
The manufacturing of new-generation synthetic leathers involves the extraction of the filling polymer from the polymer-matrix system with an organic solvent and the removal of the solvent from the highly porous material. In this paper, a mathematical model of synthetic leather drying for removing the organic solvent is proposed [1-10]. The model proposed adequately describes the real processes. To improve the accuracy of calculated moisture distributions a velocity correction factor (VCF) introduced into the calculations. The VCF reflects the fact that some of the air flowing through the bed does not participate very effectively in drying, since it is channeled into low-density areas of the inhomogeneous bed. The present chapter discusses the results of experiments to test the deductions that increased rates of drying and better agreement between predicted and experimental moisture distributions in the drying bed can be obtained by using higher air velocities [11-25].
