Numerical Solution of Simultaneous Moisture Diffusion and Shrinkage During Soybean Drying

ABSTRACT THE effect of shrinkage on moisture diffusion during drying of biological products has been considered by numerically solving simultaneously for shrinkage and moisture content, assuming a density and concentration dependent mass diffusivity. The moisture diffusion equa-tion for remoistened soybeans, simulated by spherical bodies, has been solved by a finite-element technique. The optimum values of the parameters of the mass dif-fusivity model have been estimated by the steepest-ascent method. The shrinkage coefficient for remoistened soy-beans has been estimated as 0.266 X 10 ~2.