A COMPARISON OF SOME MATHEMATICAL MODELS USEDFOR THE PREDICTION OF MASS TRANSFER KINETICS INOSMOTIC DEHYDRATION OF FRUITS

摘要

Mass transfer in osmotic dehydration of fruits at atmospheric pressure has been modeledeither by a phenomenological approach using Crank's model (which is a Fick's lawsolution), or empirically, using models developed from polynomial equations, massbalances, or relations between process variables (i.e. Magee's, Azuara's, and Page'smodels). For all these models, experimental data are required to determine the values oftheir adjustable parameters for specific processing conditions. From a wide variety ofpublished data, the parameters for moisture loss (ML) and solid gain (SG) werecalculated for the above-mentioned models, and a comparison of their correlationcapability was made. Azuara's and Page's models yield better correlations (with meanabsolute errors less than 1.26% for ML and 0.46% for SG) than Magee's and Crank'smodels (with mean absolute errors of up to 2.98% and 1.68% for ML and SG,respectively).