Simultaneous Heat and Mass Transfer Analysis on the Drying Process of Coconut Palm Sugar Using Air-oven Dryer

Abstract

Heat and mass transfer occurred simultaneously during the drying process. Therefore, the drying rate of coconut palm sugar was evaluated by analyzing heat and mass transfer simultaneously using the Runge-Kutta method. In this study, three different temperatures and three various drying loads were carried out to develop a prediction model of moisture content by determining the constant drying rate value. The result showed that the drying rate decreased significantly at the drying temperature of 80 o C according to the drying load, ranging from 1.36 to 0.32 h -1 . However, the load of the dryer only causes a slight decrease in drying rate at 60 o C. Furthermore, the developed model based on the simultaneous heat and mass transfer analysis can predict the moisture content of the sample effectively, with the value of correlation coefficient (R 2 ) over 0.97.