Estudo numérico da cinética de secagem em bananas

Abstract

The present work shows a numerical approach for the heat and mass transfer problem relative at the banana drying. A representative mathematical model of the drying kinetics in the product was presented and a numerical code based on the finite volume method was developed to solve the system of equations that describes the drying process in the food. Variable mass diffusivity with the temperature was considered in the mathematical modeling of the process . A quite reasonable agreement was verified comparing the numerical results obtained with extracted results of the literature. The influence of the important operational parameters to the process such as temperature, relative humidity and air flow rate were investigated. The numerical results showed that the increase in the temperature, the increase air flow rate and a reduction in the humidity increases the mass transfer in the food, reducing the drying time.