DRYING EXPERIMENT FOR THE TEACHING OF SIMULTANEOUS MASS AND HEAT TRANSFER

Abstract

Drying is a process widely applied industrially, especially in food technology. It usually consists of a dehydration operation, removing enough water to halt microbial development. This allows an increased shelf life and a broader range of products available to the consumer, also reducing packaging, storage and transportation costs. This work presents a simple apple dehydration experiment, suited for the teaching of simultaneous mass and heat transfer in engineering classes. The procedure for drying sliced apples in a forced air oven is presented. Data collected was analyzed using the theoretical model proposed by Crank (Crank, 1975), so that it was possible to evaluate the effective diffusion coefficient of moisture. The empiric model proposed by Page (Page, 1949) was also tested to fit data.