Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Strawberry Drying

Abstract

Strawberry drying was investigated experimentally and numerically in this study. In the experiments, samples of strawberry slices with 1 cm thicknesses were used to investigate the effect of the drying air velocity. 5-hour experiments were conducted for three different velocities (0.5, 1 and 2m/s) at 70°C air temperature. It was observed that increasing the drying air velocity up to 2 m/s decreased the drying duration by 17% on average. Moreover, the data obtained from the experimental study were compared to the numerical results. The results were found compatible with each other. Finally, the effect of air temperature and product thickness on drying was examined numerically.

Keywords

• Heat and mass transfer
• Drying
• Fick and Fourier equations
• Validation