Study on Drying Kinetics of Fermented Corn Grains

Abstract

Corn grains were fermented for three days and later drained and dried at 60⁰C, 65⁰C and 70⁰C in a convective hot air dryer. Kinetics of drying was investigated using Fick’s second law. Drying pattern was observed to be in the falling rate period. Non linear regression analysis software (SPSS), was used to fit in the experimental data and the coefficient of determination was found to be greater than 0.90 for all the models except Midilli. The values of R², RMSE, MBE and reduced chi square showed that Logarithm model best described the drying behaviour of the samples.

Keyword: fermented corn, hot air drying, mathematical modeling, laboratory tunnel dryer