Modelagem da secagem de grãos de soja utilizando modelos de contornos móveis

Abstract

Soybean is one of the main agricultural products in the national and international market. This product is used not only for the production of animal feed, but also for the production of cosmetic products, novel foods and various other industrial products. With the large scale of soybean production, it is necessary to store the product safely, free of microorganisms that may degrade the material. In order to remove these degrading agents the drying process emerges as a unit operation of importance for the maintenance of the quality of the final product. Due to this, the present work proposed to analyze the drying kinetics of the soybean in a stove of renovation and circulation of air in the temperatures of 60, 70 and 80° C, to evaluate the decrease of the radius as a function of drying time, to model the process using the concept of moving boundaries, which considers the decrease of the grain during the drying process, bringing a greater degree of realism to the model and adjust the main parameters of the model (diffusivity and β parameter of the HSU model). From the results obtained, with increasing temperature, the drying time was reduced. The decrease in radius was not significant with increasing temperature. The insertion of the moving boundary approach to the model showed a satisfactory adjustment of the parameters in which the diffusivity and the parameter β increased linearly with the temperature.