How to avoid evaporation during rheological measurements of dewatered pasty sludge at high temperature

Controlling the residence time in paddle dryers and the drying efficiency imply the knowledge of rheological behaviour of highly concentrated and pasty sludge and its temperature dependency. However, because of perturbing effects such as evaporation, measurements are not fully representative of intrinsic sludge properties. Classical techniques usually considered in the literature for evaporation control are not efficient at high temperatures. This work gives a method to control the evaporation at high temperature that can be used with any commercial rheometer. The configuration concept is to prevent water loss by limiting the contact between the sheared sludge and the environment. This configuration allows preventing evaporation up to 80 °C at least during 2 h. Its efficiency is confirmed at different total solid (TS) contents ranging from 20 to 47 wt.%.