Drying Kinetics of Banana ((Musa paradisiaca L.)Slices in GHE Solar Dryer

Abstract

One of the stages of processing green bananas into flour is the drying process. The kinetics of this process needs to be studied as a step in optimizing and improving process performance. This study aimed to assess various drying models that could explain the kinetics of drying banana slices and specify the drying kinetics parameters of banana slices. The green house effect (GHE) solar dryer was used for banana slices drying. The drying data were fitted to drying models (Page, Newton, Henderson and Pabis, Verma, and Logarithmic). The coefficient of determination (COD), root square mean errors (RSME), and Chi-square (χ2) were used to assess the models' validity. In the GHE solar dryer, the upper tray's temperature was higher than the lower tray's. The Logarithmic model best reflects the kinetics of drying banana slices among the evaluated models. The range of the effective moisture diffusivity was 1.190 x 10-10 - 1.673 x 10-10 m2 s-1. At 85.7073 kJ mol-1, the activation energy was determined.