مدل سازي خشك شدن ورقه نازك پرتقال رقم تامسون

Thin Layer Drying Process Modeling of Orange Slice (Thompson Cultivar)

Citrus fruits are holding a prominent position among agricultural products throughout the world. One of these important fruits from economical and industrial point of view is orange. This product is consumed as fresh, juice, concentrated juice andlor dried slices. In this study, thin layer drying of Thomson cultivar of orange (novel) was modeled. A laboratory dryer was employed to attain the goal. Experiments were conducted at five levels of dryer air temperature (30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 ʹC), an air velocity of 0.5 mls with orange slices of 4 mm thickness replicated three times. Under controlled conditions, samples of 5.4 to 5.7 (gig) initial moisture content (d.b) were dried. Moisture content of the mass of orange slices was continuously calculated by constantly weighing the samples during the drying process. Thirteen standard mathematical models for simulation of the thin layer drying process were asseyed through curve fitting, while three parameters of coefficient of determination (Rʹ ), chi-squarer X2 ) and root mean square error (RMSE) being used to compare the results of multivariate regression analysis. Anew model, appearing for the first time in this paperwas developed and put to test in the comparison process. Determination coefficient, chi-square and root mean square error for the new model were the most responding as compared to the rest of the models being found 99.98%, 0.00154092, and 0.03460955, respectively. Therefore, the new model provides a most promising one for predicting moisture content changes during a thin layer drying process of orange slices.