Mostafa Keshavarz Moraveji - Department of Chemical Engineering, Arak University, Iran
Emad Ghaderi - Department of Chemical Engineering, Arak University, Iran

In this study, we have used computational fluid dynamic techniques for simulating mass and heat transfer during drying of food via ohmic heating process. The goal of this study is to conduct the effects of electrical field intensity, electrical conductivity, solid heating, liquid-around-solid conductivity, and parameters such as drying rate, moisture content and temperature changes over time within drying process of potato. The resulting system of unsteady–state partial differential equations has been solved by finite element method. In fact, in this modeling, simultaneous solution of heat transfer equations, moisture, and electrical field have been used. Results show that, in comparison with other common models of heating process, ohmic heating process reduces drying time and accelerates the current diffusion in the entire product, so that it is conducted simultaneously and approximately with the same rate in both phases of solid and liquid.

Drying, Simulation, Finite Elements Method, Electrical Field, Ohmic heating