| Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is widely produced in West Africa and South America and is a great economic tree crop, with so many industrial uses. In this work, the experimental drying kinetics of foreign species was investigated, and the experiments were carried out under isothermal conditions, using heated batch drier at 55, 70 and 81 ºC. The moisture ratio data obtained from change of moisture content with the drying time was fit to two thin layer drying model with good results. A faster drying process was observed at a higher drying temperature resulting in higher drying rates which is advantageous when evaluating costs. Ficks second law of diffusion was used to predict effective diffusivity using experimental data assuming that the variation of... |
