Application of Peleg model to study water absorption in chickpea during soaking Original Research Article

Application of the Peleg model was investigated for predicting water absorption by five winter- and five spring-planted chickpea genotypes during soaking between temperature (T ) of 20 and 100 °C. The Peleg model can predict kinetics of the chickpea soaking till equilibrium using short-term data at the given conditions. Its specific form for infinite time may also be used to estimate equilibrium moisture content (Me) at T⩾40 °C. Spring and winter chickpeas showed no significant difference (P<0.05) in the Peleg rate constant (K1) and Peleg capacity constant (K2) within and between the groups at all temperatures except for K1 at T<40 °C. The discrepancy for K1 was attributed to characteristic water permeabilities of spring and winter chickpeas which were prominent at T<40 °C. The Peleg constant K1 decreased from 17.1×10−3 to 0.95×10−3 h %−1 for the spring chickpeas, and from 22.2×10−3 to 1.02×10−3 h %−1 for the winter chickpeas with increasing temperature from 20 to 100 °C. An Arrhenius plot for K1 exhibited a slope change around 55 °C corresponding to approximate gelatinization temperature of the chickpea samples. The Peleg constant K2 for the samples linearly increased from 7.26×10−3 to 9.48×10−3 %−1 with increasing temperature from 20 to 100 °C.