EMPIRICAL DRYING MODEL FOR THE MASS TRANSFER AND DRYING KINETICS OF TREATED AND UNTREATED SABA BANANA SLICES
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Description
Banana fruit is a delight in most Nigerian homes, which is usually eaten fresh, but recently, dried bananas have found their
way into the daily snacks. Unfortunately, this precious fruit suffers a huge post-harvest loss due to its high moisture content.
This work includes the fitting of the drying process to empirical models to predict the drying process using a locally
fabricated convective tray dryer. To prevent discolouring during drying, samples were treated with a 1:4 lemon juice. Drying
was carried out (for both treated and untreated samples) at temperatures of 40 0C, 50 0C, 60 0C, and 70 0C. Four empirical
models were examined (Newton, Peleg, Henderson-Pabis, and Logarithmic models), and the model with the highest R2 and
least RMSE values was adopted as the best fit for each drying temperature. Results showed that the Peleg model favoured
air-drying and at temperatures of 50 0C and 600C for untreated and treated samples, respectively, while other models
considered, best described the drying at other temperatures, for both treated and untreated samples.
Keywords
QH Natural history, TP Chemical technology