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Experimental and theoretical investigation of hot air- infrared thin layer

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DOI: 10.1016/j.eaef.2017.01.004

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 Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food

journal homepage: http://www.sciencedirect.com/eaef

Experimental and theoretical investigation of hot air- infrared thin

layer drying of corn in a fixed and vibratory bed dryer
H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki a, A. Nourmohamadi- Moghadami a, D. Zare a, *, G. Karimi b
a
Department of Biosystems Engineering, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical, Petroleum and Gas Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Drying behavior of corn (Zea mays L) was studied in a hot air-infrared dryer. The effects of inlet air
Received 6 November 2015 temperature (40, 50 and 60
C), infrared radiation intensity (1000, 2000 and 3000 W/m2), and modes of
Received in revised form drying bed (fixed and vibratory) were investigated on grain moisture variation during drying process.
22 August 2016
Corn kernels were dehydrated from the initial moisture content of 24.5 ± 0.5% (w.b) to final moisture
Accepted 15 January 2017
Available online 19 January 2017
content of 14 ± 0.2%. The thin layer drying characteristics was experimentally investigated and appro-
priate mathematical drying models were correlated with temperature and radiation intensity. Among
models fitted to experimental data, the Page model was found to be the best model for describing drying
Keywords:
Infrared drying
behavior of corn in thin layer drying form. The effective moisture diffusivity ranged from 0.6170  108
Corn to 4.6432  108 m2/s for the fixed bed mode and 0.8021  108 to 5.5533  108 m2/s for the vibratory
Drying kinetics bed mode.
Effective moisture diffusivity © 2017 Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights
Vibration reserved.

1. Introduction
Corn (Zea mays L.) is one of the most important sources of hu-
man and animal nutrition. Because of large quantity of starch,
ethanol, oil and other products, corn has a vast economic impor-
tance (Hatamipour and Mowla, 2003). One of the characteristics of
corn is high moisture content at harvest operation thus the har-
vested grains should be dried for safe storage.
Drying is an important unit operation used in numerous in-
dustries. It is one of the most cost-effective ways of protecting food
of all variety which involves removal of water content by applica-
tion of heated air (Ranjbaran and Zare, 2012).
Infrared drying involves the exposure of a material to electro-
magnetic radiation in the wave length of 0.8e1000 mm (Mohsenin,
1981). However, the wavelengths from 2.5 to 200 mm is usually
used for drying purposes (Zare et al., 2014). In this method the
material is dried directly by absorption of infrared energy from
heating element without heating surrounding air (Jones, 1992). The
use of infrared drying for dehydrating foods has numerous ad-
vantages can be noted as: high quality finished products, ease of the
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: dzare@shirazu.ac.ir, sanyzare@yahoo.com (D. Zare).
rig fabrication, fast transient response and significant energy effi-
ciency (Abe and Afzal, 1997; Pan et al., 2008; Sharma et al., 2005).
Motevali et al. (2011) investigated the energy consumption of
dried mushroom under different drying methods. They observed
that with increasing inlet air velocity in hot air dryer, the drying
time and consequently the consumed energy decreases. Also by
using hot air assisted infrared, energy consumption decreases
relative to infrared drying alone. They concluded that hot air-
infrared drying is the best method for mushroom drying
regarding energy consumption.
Zare et al. (2014) have conducted a research on kinetics of paddy
drying using a hot air-infrared dryer. They used three levels of inlet
air temperature (30, 40 and 50
C), three levels of air velocities
(0.01, 0.015 and 0.020 m/s) and three levels of infrared radiation
intensity (2000, 4000 and 6000W=m2 ). They reported that appli-
cation of a low intensity infrared radiation with lower values of
inlet air temperature and moderate values of inlet air velocity can
effectively improve the final quality of paddy in terms of bending
stress and percentage of cracked kernels.
Hall (1962), Jenkins and Forth (1965) stated that, although
infrared heating is a rapid drying method, it is suitable for surface
heating applications. When increasing the grain bed depth is
desired, the layer close to infrared source dry more quickly
compared to the deeper layers. One of methods for faster and

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2017.01.004
1881-8366/© 2017 Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
192 H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197

2. Material and methods

Nomenclature
2.1. Drying apparatus
Deff Effective moisture diffusivity (m2/s)
F0 Fourier number (Dimensionless) Drying characteristics of corn in thin layer was studied in a
M Grain moisture content (kg/kg, decimal, dry basis) combined infrared-vibratory bed dryer in Biosystems Engineering
r Radius of kernel (m) Department of Shiraz University. The experimental apparatus used
R Radiation intensity (W/m2) in this study is illustrated in Fig. 1. The dryer basically consisted of
R2 Coefficient of determination electric heating unit, infrared heating unit, a hot air conveying
T Temperature (
C) pipeline, vibratory bed unit, and variable-speed blower. Electric
heat unit consists of four 0.5-kW, one 1-kW and one 2-kW electric
Abbreviations heaters and a thermometer (SU- 105IP, Samwon Engineering) to
ASABE American Society of Agricultural and Biological keep constant the inlet drying air temperature for each run.
Engineers Infrared heating unit consisted of 9 infrared lamps of 275 W
MR Moisture ratio (OSRAM, Slovakia) and operated from a 220 V AC power supply. The
RMSE Root mean square error infrared radiation intensities were varied by changing the distance
between the lamps and the receiving surface and measured using a
Greek letter silicon solarimeter (Casella, 187010b-02, UK). Also to access the
c2 Chi-square desired uniform infrared radiation intensity levels, the mentioned
distance was adjusted manually by changing the height of lamp
Subscripts holder chassis. To ensure uniformity of infrared radiation over the
+ Initial value corn bed, a pre-test was done before the main tests. The test
e Equilibrium showed that drying times of the three identically treated samples
exp Experimental were equal which represented that the samples received equal light
i ith experimentally observed and infrared intensity from the lamps. During drying process, the
pre Predicted surface temperature of the grains was controlled to be less than
t Specific time 60
C. In addition the dryer consisted of a perforated tray which its
dimensions were 100  100 cm to provide a uniform air flow. The
Superscripts tray was divided into 9 parts. In each part a basket which made of
e
Average fence containing corn in a thin layer form was placed. Vibration was
transmitted to the tray through a link attached to a variable speed
electric motor. The motor was fixed at the base of supporting
structure of dryer. The connecting rod was attached to the axis of
uniform drying of grains is using vibration (Nindo et al., 1995). motor via eccentric limb, thus the tray had a reciprocating motion
Finzer et al. (2003) have studied on coffee berries drying in a hot in straight line. For changing the speed of the vibrating motor and
air-vibration dryer. They reported vibration can improve quality of consequently frequency of vibration, an electrical inverter (N50-
product. Also the combination of hot air-vibration reduces the time 007SF, Korea) was used. In order to produce a uniform agitation of
of drying. product in thin layer form different trial and error tests were con-
Some researcher have investigated high moisture paddy drying ducted to obtain appropriate frequency of motion for drying tray
using a vibration aided infrared dryer. They conducted their ex- (12 Hz).
periments under various vibration amplitude, frequency and time The mass flow rate of inlet air was provided by the blower and
of mixing. They found that the drying rate was dependent on ra- controlled using an electrical inverter (N50-007SF, Korea). The air
diation intensity level. The drying rate among the different bed velocity for all drying runs was measured by TESTO 425 (Germany)
depths was found to be statistically insignificant (p < 0.01) for any anemometer with accuracy of±0:03 m =s. The air flow rate was
particular radiation intensity level (Das et al., 2004, 2009). 0.250 m3/m2s (ASABE Standards, 2007).
Numerous researches have been focused on mathematical
modeling of different drying processes. Using a proper model, the
final moisture content of product can be predicted and therefore 2.2. Experimental procedure
models are frequently used as tools to estimate adapted heating or
cooling times in order to optimize product quality (Tripathy and Freshly harvested-shelled corn of “704 variety” was provided
Kumar, 2008).
Many researches were conducted on thin layer drying of food
stuffs using different treatments and drying methods such as rough
rice (Abe and Afzal, 1997), corn (Doymaz and Pala, 2003), onion
slices (Sharma et al., 2005), paddy (Das et al., 2009), soybean
(Ranjbaran and Zare, 2012), crushed rice (Tanaka et al., 2014),
hybrid rice seed (Hasan et al., 2014), quince slices (Tzempelikos
et al., 2015) but very little information is available for vibration-
aided infrared drying of corn.
The aims of this research are to (1) study the effects of the air
temperature, infrared radiation intensity and vibration on drying
kinetics of corn grains, (2) determinate thin layer drying equation of
corn and effective moisture diffusivity for combined hot-air
infrared drying for both fixed and vibratory bed.
Fig 1. Schematic of drying apparatus.
 H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197 193

from a local farm near Shiraz, Iran. The grains were first cleaned to
!
remove foreign materials and broken kernels. The cleaned grains Mt 6 Deff p2
were placed in plastic sealed bags to conserve moisture during the MR ¼ ¼ 2 exp t (3)
Mo p r2
tests and stored in refrigerator at 4e5
C. Before each test, samples
were allowed sufficient time to equilibrate at ambient temperature Eq. (3) evaluated for Fourier number (Fo ) for diffusion and can be
of 25
C for about 8 h (Zare et al., 2014). rewritten as follow:
The initial moisture content of corn was measured using stan-
dard hot air oven drying method based on dry basis for all exper- Mt 6  
iments (heating at 103
C for 72 h). It was obtained to be 24.5 ± 0.5 MR ¼ ¼ exp  p2 Fo (4)
Mo p2
% w.b (ASABE Standards, 2008).
A total of 54 experiments were run from combinations of three Taking logarithm of both sides, Eq. (4) can be written as Eq. (5):
levels of inlet air temperature (40, 50 and 60
C), three levels of
infrared radiation intensity (1000, 2000 and 3000W=m2 ), two Fo ¼ 0:101 lnðMRÞ  0:050 (5)
modes of drying bed (fixed and vibratory (12 HZ)) bed for three
replications. Fo
In order to measure moisture content variation during drying Deff ¼  2 (6)
t r
process, baskets of grains were taken out of dryer periodically and
weighted using a digital balance (GF-600, A&D Company, Japan, In all experiments and for each corresponding moisture content,
resolution ±0:01 g). the effective moisture diffusivity was estimated by substituting the
For each run, the drying process was continued until the weight positive values of Fourier number and the drying time along with
of the sample reduced to a level corresponding to a moisture equivalent radius of sphere (3.9 mm) (Eq. (6)). A digital caliper with
content of about 14.0± 0.2 (% w.b). accuracy of ±0.01 mm was used to measure the diameter of about
100 fresh corn grains.

2.3. Theoretical approach

2.3.1. Effective moisture diffusivity 2.3.2. Drying kinetics

Drying is a complex process of simultaneous heat, mass and Four different drying models were fitted to the experimental
momentum transfer phenomena and effective models are neces- data (Table 1). The non-linear regression technique was performed
sary for designing, optimizing and controlling of the drying process using SPSS 22.0 software (SPSS, 1998) to determine the constants of
(Behroozi Khazaei et al., 2013). The heat is required to evaporate the each model. The goodness of fitting was assessed using three sta-
moisture that flows the kernel surface into an external drying tistical parameters namely the coefficient of determination (R2),
medium, usually air (Brooker et al., 1992). In addition, during reduced chi-square (c2 ) and root mean square error (RMSE). The
infrared drying, heat is generated through the volume of grain best model for describing the thin layer drying characteristics of
kernels and leads to higher drying rate. Previous researches had corn was chosen as the one with the highest value of R2 and the
showed that drying of porous materials such as grains usually oc- least values forc2 and RMSE. The mentioned parameters can be
curs under falling-rate drying phase and can be approximated by calculated as follows:
Fick's second law of diffusion. By using the well-known method of
P 2
N  
slopes, the effective moisture diffusivity of corn grain was esti-
mated at corresponding moisture contents under different drying  MRexp MRpre;i  MRpre
i¼1 MRexp;i
conditions (Sharma et al., 2005; Das et al., 2009; Dak and Pareek,
R2 ¼ P  2 PN  2 (7)
N
2014). The analytical solution of diffusion equation for a homoge- i¼1 MRexp;i  MRexp i¼1 MRpre;i  MRpre

neous, isotropic sphere with constant diffusion coefficient (Crank,

1975) is as follows: PN  2
i¼1 MRexp;i  MRpre;i
! c ¼
2
(8)
Nn
Mt  Me 6 X∞ 1 Deff n2 p2
MR ¼ ¼ 2 exp t (1)
Mo  Me p n¼1 n2 r2 " #1=2
1 XN  2
RMSE ¼ MRpre;i  MRexp;i (9)
where MR, Mt , Me , Mo , Deff , t and r are the moisture ratio, the N i¼1
moisture content at a specific time, equilibrium moisture content,
initial moisture content, effective moisture diffusivity, drying time where,MRexp;i is the ith experimentally observed moisture
and radius of sphere respectively. ratio,MRexp is the average experimental moisture ratio, MRpre;i is the
When the drying time is large, Eq. (1) can be reduced to the ith predicted moisture ratio, MRpre is the average predicted mois-
simplified equation as follow (Brooker et al., 1992; Lopez et al., ture ratio, N is the number of observations and n is the number of
2000): constants in drying models.
!
Mt  Me 6 Deff p2
MR ¼ ¼ 2 exp t (2) Table 1
Mo  Me p r2 Mathematical models applied to drying curves.

The equilibrium moisture content during drying was considered No. Model name Model equation References
zero, since prolonged exposure of grain to infrared radiation 1 Newton MR ¼ exp(kt) (O’Callaghan et al., 1971)
eventually caused the burning of material and this happens only at 2 Page MR ¼ exp(ktn) (Diamante and Munro, 1993)
nearly zero moisture content (Fasina et al., 1998). Thus Eq. (2) can 3 Henderson & Pabis MR ¼ a exp(kt) (Henderson and Pabis, 1961)
4 Logarithmic MR ¼ a exp(kt)þc (Henderson, 1974)
be simplified as follow:
194 H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197

3. Results and discussion Drying time (min)

0
3.1. Determination of effective moisture diffusivity 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
-0.1

The effective moisture diffusivity of corn under various drying

-0.2
conditions was estimated from the experimental drying curves. For
this purpose, the slope of ln(MR) versus drying time was used as 40 °C

Ln(MR)
-0.3
given by Eq. (5). 50 °C
The plots of ln(MR) with drying time for different inlet air -0.4 60 °C
temperature at radiation intensity of 1000 W/m2 for the fixed and
vibratory mode are illustrated in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, respectively. As -0.5
the inlet air temperature increase, the effective moisture diffusivity
-0.6
increase for two bed modes with respect to Arrhenius equation
(Brooker et al., 1992).
-0.7
The plots of ln(MR) versus drying time for different radiation
intensity at temperature of 50
C for the fixed and vibratory bed Fig. 3. The variations of ln(MR) versus drying time for different inlet air temperature
mode are illustrated in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5, respectively. It can be seen and radiation intensity of 1000 W/m2 in the vibratory bed mode.
that by increasing the radiation intensity the effective moisture
diffusivity increases. This is due to the fact the increase in radiation
intensity caused rapid rise in temperature of the product, which in Drying time (min)
0
turn increased the vapor pressure and consequently led to faster 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
drying diffusion of moisture towards the surface. The similar trend -0.1
was also observed for the fixed and vibratory modes.
-0.2
The values of calculated effective moisture diffusivity for No Infrared
different radiation intensity and inlet air temperatures are given in -0.3
Ln(MR)

1000 W/m2
Table 2. It can be seen that the values of effective moisture diffu-
-0.4 2000 W/m2
sivity have increased by increasing radiation intensity and inlet air
temperature. Furthermore in the vibratory bed mode, the value of 3000 W/m2
-0.5
effective moisture diffusivity was higher than that of calculated for
the fixed bed mode as the corn kernel rotates in the vibratory bed -0.6
mode and receives uniform radiation by all part of grain. The values
-0.7
of effective moisture diffusivity for foodstuffs are generally in the
range of 1011 to 109 m2/s during hot air drying (Madamba et al., Fig. 4. The variations of ln(MR) versus drying time for different radiation intensity and
1996). In the present research, the effective moisture diffusivity is temperature of 50
C in the fixed bed mode.
in the range of 0.6170  108 to 4.6432  108 m2/s for the fixed
bed mode and 0.8021  108 to 5.5533  108 m2/s for the vibra-
tory bed mode which are higher than the mentioned range as a Drying time (min)
0
result of application of combined-infrared radiation and vibration 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
during drying process. -0.1

-0.2
3.2. Mathematical modeling of thin layer drying No Infrared
Ln(MR)

-0.3 1000 W/m2

Curve fitting was performed on the mentioned drying models 2000 W/m2
-0.4
(Table 1) to correlate the moisture ratio with drying parameters 3000 W/m2
including drying time, inlet drying air temperature, infrared -0.5

-0.6

Drying time (min) -0.7

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Fig. 5. The variations of ln(MR) versus drying time for different radiation intensity and
-0.1 temperature of 50
C in the vibratory bed mode.

-0.2
radiation density for two drying modes of fixed and vibratory beds.
40 °C The corresponding constants as well as the values of statistical
Ln(MR)

-0.3
50 °C parameters are given in Tables 3 and 4 for the fixed and vibratory
-0.4 60 °C bed, respectively. The experimental data of moisture ratio versus
those predicted by Page model for the fixed and vibratory bed is
-0.5 shown in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. These figures indicate the
suitability of the mentioned model.
-0.6

3.3. Effect of inlet air temperature

-0.7

Fig. 2. The variations of ln(MR) versus drying time for different inlet air temperature The typical drying curves of corn grains at infrared radiation
(
C) and radiation intensity of 1000 W/m2 in the fixed bed mode. intensity of 2000 W/m2, inlet air temperatures of 40, 50 and 60+ C
 H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197 195

Table 2 foodstuffs by other researchers (Zare et al., 2014; Sharma et al.,

The calculated effective moisture diffusivity at different drying conditions. 2005; Das et al., 2004). For all drying treatments, the drying time
Temperature (
C) Radiation (W/m2) Deff £ 108 (m2 /s) was found to reduce with the increase in inlet air temperature.
Fixed bed mode Vibratory bed mode

40 0 0.6170 0.8021
1000 1.1107 1.5888
3.4. Effect of infrared radiation intensity
2000 1.6351 1.9437
3000 2.6995 3.0852 The infrared radiation also influenced on the drying time of corn
50 0 0.9401 1.1261 grains as shown in typical Fig. 10 and Fig. 11. At a given drying air
1000 1.5580 1.9591
temperature (40
C), an increase in infrared radiation intensity
2000 2.5607 2.9926
3000 3.1777 3.3937 reduced the drying time in both fixed and vibratory modes. Similar
60 0 1.2649 1.5580 result has been reported (Abe and Afzal, 1997; Das et al., 2004). As
1000 2.7458 2.9309 expected at higher radiation intensity, the higher mass transfer
2000 3.7022 4.7203 driving force resulted in faster drying rate and consequently lesser
3000 4.6432 5.5533
drying time.

Table 3
Values of coefficients of selected models and statistical results through the regression method for each temperature in the fixed bed mode.

No. Model name Model constants R2 (%) c2 RMSE

1 Newton k ¼ 0:26 ln ðTÞ þ 0:129 ln ðR  2:453Þ 90.5 0.0007 0.0261

2 Page k ¼ 0:08 ln ðTÞ þ 0:010 lnðR þ 0:855Þn ¼ 0:159 ln ðTÞ þ 0:074 lnðR þ 0:855Þ 96.5 0.0006 0.0249
3 Henderson & Pabis a ¼ 0.994 92.4 0.0008 0.0281
k ¼ 0:025 ln ðTÞ þ 0:022 lnðR  2:970Þ
4 Logarithmic a ¼ 0.423 87.7 0.0007 0.0258
c ¼ 0.579
k ¼ 0:012 ln ðTÞ þ 0:022 lnðR þ 0:344Þ

Table 4
Values of coefficients of selected models and statistical results through the regression method for each temperature in the vibratory bed mode.

No. Model name Model constants R2 (%) c2 RMSE

1 Newton k ¼ 0:005 ln ðTÞ þ 0:004 lnðR  0:673Þ 83.9 0.0005 0.0288

2 Page k ¼ 0:009 ln ðTÞ þ 0:013 lnðR þ 0:815Þn ¼ 0:168 ln ðTÞ þ 0:050 lnðR þ 0:815Þ 97.4 0.0004 0.0215
3 Henderson & Pabis a ¼ 0.937k ¼ 0:003 ln ðTÞ þ 0:005 lnðR þ 0:937Þ 85.7 0.0007 0.0261
4 Logarithmic a ¼ 0.003 89.7 0.0008 0.0297
c ¼ 0.763
k ¼ 0:049 ln ðTÞ þ 0:056 lnðR þ 0:022Þ

1 1

0.9
Predicted moisture ratio

0.9
Predicted moisture ratio

0.8
0.8

0.7
0.7

0.6

0.6
0.5
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
0.5
Experimental moisture ratio 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Fig.6. The experimental data versus predicted data of moisture ratio for the Page Experimental moisture ratio
model in the fixed bed mode.
Fig.7. The experimental data versus predicted data of moisture ratio for the Page
model in the vibratory bed mode.

are illustrated for two drying bed modes in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9,
respectively. The mentioned figures show the change in moisture
3.5. Effect of vibration
ratio of the sample with drying time. The drying process took place
mostly in falling rate period and no constant rate period was
Fig. 12 shows the change in moisture ratio of the corn kernels
observed. This trend was also reported for some fruits and
196 H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197

1 1

0.9

0.8 0.8
Moisture ratio

Moisture ratio
0.7 No infrared
° 1000 W/m2
0.6 40 C 0.6
50°C 2000 W/m2

60°C 0.5 3000 W/m2

0.4
0.4

0.3
0.2 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Drying time (min)
Drying time (min)
Fig. 11. Variation of moisture ratio versus drying time at various radiation intensity
Fig. 8. Variation of moisture ratio versus drying time at various inlet air temperatures and inlet air temperature of 40
C for the vibratory bed mode.
and radiation intensity of 2000 W/m2 for the fixed mode.

1
1
Fixed bed
0.9
Vibratory
0.8 Moisture ratio
0.8
Moisture ratio

°
0.6 40 C 0.7
50°C
60°C 0.6
0.4

0.5
0.2 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 Drying time (min)
Drying time (min)
Fig. 12. Variation of moisture ratio versus drying time at inlet air temperature of 40
C
Fig. 9. Variation of moisture ratio versus drying time at various inlet air temperatures and radiation intensity of 2000 W/m2 for the fixed and vibratory bed mode.
and radiation intensity of 2000 W/m2 for the vibratory mode.

4. Conclusion
1
No infrared The experimental moisture ratio was fitted to four thin layer
0.9
1000 W/m2 drying models i.e. Newton, Page, Henderson & Pabis and Loga-
0.8 2000 W/m2 rithmic. Three criteria were used to evaluate the fitting of the
Moisture ratio

3000 W/m2 models to experimental data. The best model has the highest R2
0.7
value and the lowest RMSE and c2 values. Among these models the
0.6 most appropriate model for the fixed bed mode was the Page model
with the values of 96.5%, 0.0006 and 0.0249 for R2, c2 and RMSE,
0.5
respectively. Furthermore the best model for vibratory mode was
0.4 the Page model with the values of 97.4%, 0.0004 and 0.0215 for R2,
c2 and RMSE, respectively. Hence, the Page model was chosen to
0.3
represent the thin layer drying of corn in fixed and vibratory bed
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
mode.
Drying time (min)
The drying time reduced with increase in inlet air temperature
Fig. 10. Variation of moisture ratio versus drying time at various radiation intensity and radiation intensity in two modes of fixed and vibratory.
and inlet air temperature of 40
C for the fixed bed mode. Furthermore the drying time in vibratory bed mode has more
reduction compared to the fixed bed mode.

against drying time at infrared radiation intensity of 2000 W/m2,

inlet air temperature of 40
C in two modes of drying bed (fixed and
vibratory). As can be seen, the drying time in vibratory mode is Acknowledgment
reduced compared to the fixed bed mode. The similar trends are
obtained for other treatments. The authors wish to thank Research Council of Shiraz University,
Shiraz, Iran, for providing necessary funds and research facilities
required for this investigation.
 H. Rahmanian- Koushkaki et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food 10 (2017) 191e197 197

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