Soft condensed matter (SCM) physics has recently gained importance for a large class of engineeringmaterials. The treatment of food materials from a soft matter perspective, however, is only at the surfaceand is gaining importance for understanding the complex phenomena and structure of foods. In thiswork, we present a theoretical treatment of navy beans from a SCM perspective to describe the hydrationkinetics. We solve the transport equations within a porous matrix and employ the Flory–Huggin’sequation for polymer–solvent mixture to balance the osmotic pressure. The swelling of the legume seedis modelled as a moving boundary with an explicit transient equation. The model exhibits a good agreementwith the experimental observations and is capable of explaining the stages of hydration. Sensitivityanalysis indicated that the degree of hydration is dependent on the bean size and is also sensitive to theselection of the intrinsic permeability of the bean.
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