Modelo empírico para estimação da constante de secagem de casulos do bicho-da-seda, em leito fixo.

Abstract

The industrial drying operation is determined with the knowledge of the drying kinetic of biological products. The drying kinetic of agricultural products permits to verify the behavior of the moisture content of the products as a function of the drying time. The realization of a drying experiment is very costly and slow, and due to this factors it’s not possible to verify generally the effect of the variables that interfere on it in a considera-ble interval, verifying its influences in some cases only. The objective of this paper is to present a linear empirical equation that determine the drying constant of silkworm cocoon under various drying conditions as a function of three variables: temperature, air flow and layer tickness. The results obtained indicated that the equation when used to obtain the dry-ing constant present a average error of 1.28 % and standard deviation of 0.01 % in the interval considered. The analysis of the results obtained showed that the formulation adopted is satisfactory and permit to obtain by simulation the differents periods of drying curve in several experimental conditions, verifying the influences produced by the temperature and drying air flow, as well as the layer tickness of cocoon.