WSEAS Transactions on Mathematics
Print ISSN: 1109-2769, E-ISSN: 2224-2880
Volume 13, 2014
Modelling of Drying Tropical Fruits Using Multiphase Model
Authors: ,
Abstract: Single-phase heat and mass models have been widely used to describe the movement of moisture and heat during drying of food products. This model often taken food as a homogeneous medium and does not allow to incorporate more detailed ongoing processes inside the fruits tissues during drying. Hence, this paper focuses on the development of a model to describe the movement of moisture and heat during drying of fruits that is based on their cellular structure and model are derived using multi-phase approach. Specifically, mathematical model is developed to utilizing COMSOL Multiphysics to solve the equations governing the transport of moisture and heat in order to predict the moisture lost during drying of fruit. Simulation of multi-phase model yield result similar with single-phase model and also generates result not evident in homogeneous model such as water vapour in intercellular space. The results show that the moisture decreased due to the effect of the temperature, water vapour and bound water. However, bound water has no influence at the beginning of drying, while plays a significant role at the later stage of drying. Moreover, pressure plays a significant role on transport of liquid water from one cell to another cell which associates by plasmodesmata transport. The results obtained herein can provide some new theoretical guidelines for the development of drying model.
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Pages: 840-851
WSEAS Transactions on Mathematics, ISSN / E-ISSN: 1109-2769 / 2224-2880, Volume 13, 2014, Art. #82