Intermittent Drying of Mango Tissues: Implementation of the Reaction Engineering Approach

Abstract

A drying model is very useful for design and evaluation of dryer performance. A good drying model should be simple, accurate, robust, and favorable for quick decision-making in industries. For sustainable processing and product technology objectives, intermittent drying is conducted to minimize energy consumption and achieve better quality of products. In this paper, the reaction engineering approach (REA) is applied innovatively for modeling the intermittent drying of mango tissues. The equilibrium activation energy and the heat balance are implemented according to the corresponding drying condition in each section. Prediction of surface temperature is also incorporated because the sample dimensions are rather thick. Results of modeling reveal that the REA describes both moisture content and temperature profile very well. This has shown further success of the REA to model drying under time-varying mode. In addition, the modeling itself is still proven to be simple and only requires short computational time. This makes future applications for solving industrial problems very promising.