Drying kinetics of oil palm trunk waste in control atmosphere and open air convection drying

The oil palm trunk chips were dried in a laboratory scale convective drying at two different operating conditions; open air fan drying and control atmosphere drying (25 degrees C and 80% relative humidity). The experimental drying data were used to estimate the drying kinetics and to select the suitable form of drying curves. Six different mathematical models such as Henderson-Pabis, Logarithmic, Midilli-Kucuk, Newton, Page, Wang-Singh models and the newly introduced modified Midilli-Kucuk model were applied to the experimental data and their co-efficient of regression, root mean square errors and sum of square error, were compared and predicted by non-linear regression analysis using the MATLAB R2011b (7.13.0.564) software. It was found that the proposed modified Midilli-Kucuk model could predict the drying rate curve when compared with the experimental data point for the drying of oil palm trunk chips. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.