A Theoretical Analysis of Pasta Drying Process

This research presented a theoretical model describing the transport phenomena involved in pasta drying. Aim of the study was to determine the influence of some of the most important operating variables, especially humidity and temperature of drying air on the performance of drying process of pasta. This, in fact, simulated the simultaneous bidimensional heat and moisture transfer accounting for the variation of both air and food physical properties as functions of local values of temperature and moisture content. The resulting system of unsteady–state partial differential equations has been solved by a commercial FEM package, called COMSOL. Simulations showed that temperature of air is more effective than air relative humidity to determine the drying rate.

Keywords:

Drying , Finite element method , Modeling , Pasta production