CINÉTICA DE SECAGEM DE GRÃOS DE ABÓBORA

Abstract

The objective this work was to study the drying of integers grains of pumpkin, grains without tegument and grain flour of pumpkin in an oven with forced air circulation at temperatures of 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 °C and adjust the mathematical models of the Diffusion Approximation, Two Term Exponential, Hen- derson and Pabis, Logarithmic and Page, to the experimental values. The fit of the mathematical models to data from the drying kinetics was performed using analysis of nonlinear regression, through Quasi-Newton method, using the software Statistica 5.0. As a criterion for adjustment of the models the coefficient of determination and mean-square deviation were used. It was observed that processing influenced the time of drying, where the samples of grain flour of pumpkin demanded a shortest time to reach equilibrium. For samples of integers grains of pumpkin and grains without tegument, the model that best fitted the experimental data was of the Dif- fusion Approximation at all temperatures studied; for samples of grain flour, the logarithmic model was the best fit to drying curve.