Thin-layer drying characteristics of Kachkal banana peel (Musa ABB) of Assam, India

The present study investigated the thin-layer drying characteristics of kachkal (Musa ABB) peel in a convective tray dryer with four different drying temperatures of 40, 50, 60 and 70°C, which exhibited falling rate period. The initial moisture content of sample was 85.47% wet basis which was reduced to 7.02 to 10.59%. In order to select suitable form of drying curve nine different thin-layer drying models were fitted to experimental data. Among all the models fitted modified Page model was found to be the best fitted model to describe the drying behaviour of kachkal peel with lowest X² value of 2.236 x 10^-4 and highest R² value of 0.998. The effective moisture diffusivity was 2.05 x10^-9 m²/s and 7.80 x10^-9 m²/s at 40 and 70°C respectively. The result indicates that effective diffusion coefficient increased with increase in temperature. The value of activation energy (Ea) was found to be 27.22 kJ/mol.