A Parametric Testing Of The Firefly Algorithm In The Determination Of The Optimal Osmotic Drying Parameters Of Mushrooms

Abstract

The Firefly Algorithm (FA) is employed to determine the optimal parameter settings in a case study of the osmotic dehydration process of mushrooms. In the case, the functional form of the dehydration model is established through a response surface technique and the resulting mathematical programming is formulated as a non-linear goal programming model. For optimization purposes, a computationally efficient, FA-driven method is used and the resulting optimal process parameters are shown to be superior to those from previous approaches. The final section of this study provides a computational experimentation performed on the FA to analyze its relative sensitivity over a range of the two key parameters that most influence its running time.