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TOPIC: FOOD ENGINEERING

Food Drying Employing Airflow Reversal

Amador, M. A.1*; Herman, L. E.2; Martínez, S. C. E.2 y Ruiz, L. I. I.3.

1 Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Juan RodríguezClara. Calle José Ma. Morelos Pavón No.507, Col. Mata Bejuco. Juan Rodríguez Clara, Ver. *fito_adamme@hotmail.com
2 Instituto Tecnológico de Tuxtepec. Calz. Dr. Víctor Bravo A. s/n. Tuxtepec, Oax.
3Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. Colegio de Ingeniería en Alimentos. Facultad de Ing. Química. Puebla, Pue.

The operation variables during the food drying when are used inadequately mayproduce an increase of time, energy and cost of the dehydration process of a product, mainly when fixed bed drying with airflow unidirectional are employed. Therefore, it is important to carry out a fooddrying prediction employing airflow reversal that permit to obtain information about behavior and drying time reduction. The objective of this work was to simulate the convective drying process offoods over fixed beds using a periodical inversion of airflow direction. Carrots drying kinetics at different temperature (50, 70 and 90 ºC) were employed with different drying air velocities (2.0, 4.0and 6.0 m/s), bed high (5, 10 and 15 cm), particle thickness of the product (0.1, 1.0 and 2.0 cm) and inversion time of airflow direction (15, 30 min and without inversion) were employed too. After amechanistic model was developed taking the mass and energy balances like mathematical base. The model considered thermal-physical, transfer and equilibrium parameters between air and product. Thismathematical model represented like a non-lineal differential equations system was computed for solving the drying experimental kinetics. Results showed a statistical difference employing airflowreversal with respect to airflow unidirectional. Drying time using airflow reversal each 15 min was the lowest at any operation condition. Simulated drying Kinetics by mechanistic model estimated the...