Dependence of the effective diffusion coefficient of moisture with thickness and temperature in convective drying of sliced materials. A study on slices of banana, cassava and pumpkin

Several studies have indicated that effective diffusion coefficients of slices apparently vary with the thickness of the samples. Even though the effective diffusion coefficients have been observed to be dependent on the square of the slice thickness, a theoretical explanation to this behavior is not available to date. A theoretical model is formulated herein, in order to correlate effective diffusion coefficient of moisture in the slices with the slice thickness. Experiments are carried out for drying of slices of different thicknesses of banana, cassava and pumpkin in order to evaluate the effective diffusion coefficients. The model is found to describe the variation of the effective diffusion coefficient with slice thickness very satisfactorily. A possibility of the estimation of the axial and radial diffusion coefficients of moisture in the slices is also outlined. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.