Hot air drying characteristics of mango ginger: Prediction of drying kinetics by mathematical modeling and artificial neural network.

Mango ginger (Curcuma amada) was dried in a
through-flow dryer system at different temperatures (40–
70 °C) and air velocities (0.84 – 2.25 m/s) to determine
the effect of drying on drying rate and effective diffusivity.
As the temperature and air velocity increased, drying time
significantly decreased. Among the ten different thin layer
drying models considered to determine the kinetic drying
parameters, semi empirical Midilli et al., model gave the
best fit for all drying conditions. Effective moisture diffusivity
varied from 3.7 × 10−10m2/s to 12.5 × 10−10m2/s over
the temperature and air velocity range of study. Effective
moisture diffusivity regressed well with Arrhenius model
and activation energy of the model was found to be
32.6 kJ/mol. Artificial neural network modeling was also
employed to predict the drying behaviour and found suitable
to describe the drying kinetics with very high correlation
coefficient of 0.998.