A Preliminary Study: Kinetic Model of Drying Process of Pumpkins (Cucurbita Moschata) in a Convective Hot Air Dryer

摘要

Drying of pumpkin (Cucurbila moschata) was investigated experimentally using a hot air convective dryer. 30 samples of pumpkin with thickness of 2 mm and 4 mm were subjected to 11 hours drying at temperatures 50 °C. 60 °C and 70 °C respectively. The drying data were fitted to the Moisture Ratio (MR) models, which produced MR = aexp1" as the model of prediction. Selection of the best model was investigated using statistical analysis of variance, carried out via SPSS 17.0. Lewis, Henderson and Pabismodels gave the best prediction with R (97.1%), R~2 (94.2%), SSE (0.577) and R (95.7%), R~2 (91.6%). SSE (0.703) respectively.