Experimental Investigation of Drying Behaviour of Bitter Gourd in Fluidized Bed Dryer

Abstract

This paper presents the thin layer drying experiments and mathematical modeling of bitter gourd grown in
Tamilnadu, India. Drying Characteristics of bitter gourd were examined moisture content from 90 ± 1% to 14 ± 0.5%
using hot air of the temperature range of 50-70oC.The result have shown that, increasing the drying air temperature
causes shorter drying times. The experimental drying curves obtained were fitted to number of (15) mathematical
models. Comparing the determination of coefficient, reduced chi-square and values of 15 models, it was concluded
that the Two term exponential, Midilli. et al and Modified Page model represents drying characteristics better than the
others. The effective diffusivity coefficient of moisture transfer varied from 5.9442 X 10 -10 to 8.9163 X 10 -10 m²/s
over the temperature range. The temperature dependence of the diffusivity coefficients was described by Arrhenius
type relationship. The activation energy for moisture diffusion was found to be 16.3 kJ/mol.