A Moisture Transfer Model for Isothermal Drying of Plant Cellular Materials Based on the Pore Network Approach

Abstract

Plant materials with cellular structure, like fruits and vegetables, are often viewed as porous media in terms of model building of the drying process, on the basis of a hypothesis that all of the moisture of a plant tissue is trapped in a continuous and connected pore network system. However, most of the moisture in the plant tissue is contained naturally in enclosed cells. In the course of drying, the trapped moisture has to cross the cell membranes and then migrates in the extracellular space. Based on this concept, a pore network model for isothermal drying of plant materials was developed in which two stages of moisture movement—transmembrane transfer and extracellular transfer in the pore network—were considered. Finally, the isothermal convective air-drying processes of a potato slice were simulated. The calculated results were validated by the experiments conducted under the simulation conditions.

Keywords:

• Intracellular moisture
• Isothermal drying simulation
• Moisture transmembrane transfer
• Plant materials
• Pore network

Notes

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ldrt.