The effect of air temperature, air velocity and infrared (IR) radiation on the drying kinetics of sour cherry was investigated using a laboratory infrared dryer. Experiments were conducted at air temperatures of 35, 50 and 65°C, air velocities of 0.5, 1.1 and 1.7 m/s and IR radiations of 500, 1,000 and 1,500 W. Five empirical drying models for describing time dependence of the moisture ratio change were fitted to experimental data. Artificial neural network (ANN) method was used to predict the effective moisture diffusivity and specific energy consumption of the samples. Among the applied models, Midilli et al. model was the best to predict the thin layer drying behavior of sour cherry. Effective moisture diffusivity of sour cherry varied between... |