Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Artigo Acesso aberto Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

BIBTEX RIS

Mathematical modeling of pequi pulp drying and effective diffusivity determination

2017; UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE CAMPINA GRANDE; Volume: 21; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1590/1807-1929/agriambi.v21n7p493-498

1807-1929

Elisabete Piancó de Sousa, Rossana Maria Feitosa de Figueirêdo, Josivanda Palmeira Gomes, Alexandre José de Melo Queiroz, Deise Souza de Castro, Danielle Martins Lemos,

Microencapsulation and Drying Processes

ABSTRACT The aim of this work was to study the drying kinetics of pequi pulp by convective drying at different conditions of temperature (50, 60, 70 and 80 °C) and thickness (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 cm) at the air speed of 1.0 m s-1, with no addition of adjuvant. The experimental data of pequi pulp drying kinetics were used to plot drying curves and fitted to the models: Midilli, Page, Henderson & Pabis and Newton. Effective diffusivity was calculated using the Fick’s diffusion model for a flat plate. It was found that, with increasing thickness, the drying time increased and, with increasing temperature, the drying time was reduced. The Midilli model showed the best fit to the experimental data of pequi pulp drying at all temperatures and thicknesses, presenting higher coefficients of determination (R2), indicating that this model satisfactorily represents the pequi pulp drying phenomenon. There was a trend of increase in the effective diffusivity with the increase in pulp layer thickness and temperature.