Theoretical and Experimental Determination of the Equilibrium Moisture Content of Safflower Seed in a Moisture Absorption Process

Importance of safflower as an oilseed crop, particularly due to fatty acid contents linoleic its world production has been focused. In the present study amount of moisture content in safflower seed at different ambient temperatures of 25, 40 and 60˚C were measured using gravimetric method. In order to run the experiments a controllable environmental chamber was used. The obtained E.M.C experimental values were employed to plot the isotherm curve at different environmental air temperatures. These data were also used to find the best fit E.M.C prediction equation. The data were fed to fourteen popular mathematical models namely: Caurie, Chung–Pfost, GAB, Halsey, Henderson, Kuhn, Modified BET, Modified Chung–Pfost, Modified Halsey, Modified Henderson, Modified Oswin, Modified Smith, Oswin and Peleg. The well known statistical factors such as coefficient of determination (), chi-square (), root of mean square error (RMSE) were calculated to validate the goodness of fit. The peleg model was selected as the best model for predicting the EMC at 25 and 40˚C temperatures level and the Oswin model was selected as the best model for predicting the EMC at 60˚C temperatures level. The results showed that increasing the environment temperature at a constant relative humidity, the equilibrium moisture content showed decreasing trend.