Sumario: | The drying behaviour of soybeans previously water soaked to a moisture content above that of the naturally moist product was studied. A comparison was performed between thin layer and fluidized bed drying (up to 20 cm depth). In both cases, thin layer or fluidized beds of variable heights, a satisfactory description of the drying kinetics was obtained using Fick's second law for diffusion out of spheres. However, it was found that the diffusion coefficients so obtained showed a tendency to decrease with increasing bed height. This is attributed to the drop in the temperature in the fluidized bed which affects the diffusion coefficients. Activation energies were found to be fairly independent of bed height and were in the range 6.9–7.4 Kcal/mol. Copyright © 1984, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved
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