EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF CONVECTIVE DRYING KINETICS OF WHITE RADISH

The influence of air temperature on drying kinetics of radish slices in a bench scale convective tray dryer was examined experimentally and suitable drying model was developed. The experiments of drying of radish slices were conducted at 40, 50 and 60 °C with an air velocity of 2 m/s. The moisture transport from the radish slices are defined by Fick’s diffusion model and effective diffusivity changes between 3.3 5.55 10 m min ⁄ . An Arrhenius relation with activation energy value of 18.49 kJ/mol expressed the effect of temperature on the diffusivity. Also, drying data were fitted to ten commonly used thin-layer drying models. The statistical parameters coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) were examined for evaluating the models. Among the models, Hii et al. model was the best to explain the single layer drying of white radish slices.