Abstract:
An effective drying model should be accurate yet require a small number of experiments to
generate the parameters. The relative activation energy of various food materials, important
drying kinetic properties used in reaction engineering approach (REA), is evaluated and
summarized. The REA is then implemented to model the global and local drying rates of food
materials. By using the relative activation energy, the REA describes well (R2 higher than 0.99)
global drying rate of food materials. The REA can be coupled with a set of equations of
conservation of heat and mass transfer to model the local drying rate of food materials. The
relative activation energy is indeed proven to be accurate to model the local drying rate. While
the predictions are accurate, the REA is very effective to generate the drying parameters since
the relative activation energy can be generated from one accurate drying run since different
drying conditions of the same material with similar initial moisture content would result in the
similar relative activation energies. The drying kinetics parameters generated here are readily used for design of new equipment, evaluate the performance of existing dryers and monitor the
product quality.
