Abstract:
Drying characteristics of black pepper in a lab scale spouted bed dryer with internal devices were investigated. Two draft tube configurations namely porous draft tube and non-porous draft tube have been used as the internal devices in the spouted bed dryer. Effect of internal devices on drying kinetics was examined. The highest drying rate was achieved when black pepper was dried in porous draft tube fitted system. Drying kinetic data obtained from experiments were fitted to six thin layer drying models available in literature namely Newton, Page, Henderson and Pabis, Two compartment, Abbasi et al. and Verma et al. models. Best model was identified by comparing the statistical parameters such as coefficient of determination, sum of square error and root mean square error between the experimental and predicted values. According to the statistical analysis, Verma et al. model and Abbasi et al. model show the best results for the drying behaviour of black pepper in spouted bed dryer with both draft tube configurations under the conditions tested.
