Mathematical Modeling of Oven Drying kinetics and Study on Effective Moisture Diffusivity of Spirulina platensis Biomass

Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) is a cyanobacteria produced under hot and arid climates. Large scale Production of Spirulina platensis biomass has been extended due to considerable nutritional value for use as food supplements. It contains 60– 70% (wb) proteins, vitamins (A, B1, B2, B12), minerals (iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, manganese, copper, zinc, magnesium), High value phytonutrients and pigments, which have applications in healthy foods and therapeutics has been receiving more attention from researchers. After cultivation and harvesting, the biomass must be dried, to obtained fine powder which should be appropriate for use in food products. The aim of this study was to obtain and evaluate the experimental data of Spirulina biomass oven drying and modeling the drying process using empirical models. To this purpose, Spirulina biomass formed to filaments shape with 2 mm thickness and drying process was done at 50 and 60 °C. All experiments were performed in triplicate. To investigate the drying kinetics, Effective moisture diffusivity were used. The results showed that increase in temperature had significant effects on moisture diffusivity and as the temperature rise, moisture diffusivity increased. 12 different models were used for Modeling of drying kinetics. the models were compared based on the determination coefficient (R2), the sum of squared errors (SSE) and the root mean square error (RMSE) and the best models fitted to the data of drying process were Page model for 50°C and a tow term model for 60°C.

Keywords:

Spirulina , Drying , Oven , Mathematical Modeling , kinetics