Analysis of drying of melon peels using numerical solution of the diffusion equation

The objective of this work was to apply a diffusive model to describe the drying of melon peels and use them to analyze the process for various operating conditions. For this, a numerical solution was developed considering shrinkage and diffusivity as a function of the local moisture content. This solution was obtained considering a boundary condition of the third kind. In the present work, drying of melon peels was carried out in an oven (with and without osmotic pretreatment) at temperatures of 60 and 70°C. The osmotic pretreatments were carried out in binary solutions (sucrose and distilled water) with 20 °Brix at a ratio of 1:3 (g/g) (peel to solution). According to the statistical indicators obtained, the model proposed adequately fitted to the experimental data, providing values for the chi‐square and the coefficient of determination of 7.682 × 10−4 to 2.356 × 10−3 and .99953–.99982, respectively. Both pretreatment and temperature influenced the drying parameters of the process.