Kinetic drying experimental data and mathematil model for sweet cherries(Prunus avium).

MABEL VULLIOUD; CARLOS A. MARQUEZ; ANTONIO DE MICHELIS

JOURNAL OF FOOD PROCESS ENGINEERING

Año: 2008

0145-8876

ABSTRACT Models for food particles and dryers design should be as simple as possible. A dryer can be visualized as formed by a number of thin layer beds, ideally one particle deep. Therefore, thin-layer dehydration studies are an essential step to developing methods for industrial equipment design. In this work, drying curves were experimentally determined for sweet cherry fruits, using air temperatures of 50, 60, 70 and 80C; air relative humidities of 5 and 50%; and air velocities of 1, 2, 3 and 5 m/s. A short time analytic predictive model for diffusion inside solids, fast to run on the computer, was selected to interpret the data with satisfactory accuracy. By this fitting procedure, diffusion coefficients of water in sweet cherries were determined to vary between 6.814 ¥ 10-11 (50C) and 3.474 ¥ 10-10 (80C) m2/s. The relationship of diffusivities with temperature was accounted for by using an Arrhenius-type equation.