Transp Porous Med (2013) 98:589–613 DOI 10.1007/s11242-013-0162-x Identification of the Liquid and Vapour Transport Parameters of an Ecological Building Material in Its Early Stages A. Zaknoune · P. Glouannec · P. Salagnac Received: 20 July 2012 / Accepted: 17 April 2013 / Published online: 2 May 2013 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract To fulfil the requirements of the new environmental standards in the building sector, increased use of materials containing vegetable particles (hemp) is expected. The manufacturing process of these materials has not yet reached the industrial stage which requires control of the drying process. The objective of this work is to study the various mechanisms of heat and mass transfers occurring during the drying of lime–hemp materials. A macroscopic model has been developed and solved numerically. In order to obtain the moisture transport coefficients, an optimization algorithm was used, allowing the estimation of parameter values by minimising an error criterion between simulated and experimental observations. Keywords Heat and mass transfer · Porous media · Hemp material · Inverse techniques · Drying kinetics List of Symbols Variables a W Water activity C p Specific heat at constant pressure (J kg -1 K -1 ) D Diffusion coefficient (kg m -1 s -1 ) e Thickness (cm) F m Mass flux (kg m -2 s -1 ) A. Zaknoune · P. Glouannec (B ) Laboratoire d’Ingénierie des MATériaux de Bretagne (LIMATB), Centre de Recherche, Université de Bretagne Sud, B.P. 92116, 56321 Lorient Cedex, France e-mail: patrick.glouannec@univ-ubs.fr P. Salagnac Laboratoire des Sciences de l’Ingénieur pour l’Environnement (LaSIE), Pôle Sciences et Technologie, Université de La Rochelle, Av. M. Crépeau, 17042 La Rochelle Cedex 1, France 123