Simulation of wheat (Tagan) kernel drying kinetics model

Artificial drying of agricultural products is one of the most common methods of preservation. Proper drying procedures eliminate the extent of spoilage during subsequent storage and increases the shelf life of the product. Controlled the drying process is important for improving dryer design. A finite element method is used to obtain numerical solutions to the simultaneous moisture equation describing the moisture removal process for isotropic sphere and axisymmetric ellipsoid. It assumes that moisture diffuses to the outer boundaries of the kernel in liquid form and that evaporation takes place only at the surface of grain. Thin layer of wheat dried at 35, 45, 50, 60 and 70 ºC temperatures. The least and the most values of Root Mean Square Error between sphere model and experimental data are 0.02984 and 0.04973 respectively and between ellipsoid model and experimental data are 0.00971 and 0.02021 respectively. Simulation of ellipsoid model results agreed well with the experimental data of thin layer drying. So ellipsoid model for simulation of mass transfer in wheat kernel during drying can successfully be used.