Abstract This study focuses on the convective drying of apple rings by air at ambient temperature. The lumped reaction engineering approach (REA) model has been employed to determine the rate of drying for apple rings under forced convection considered as a normal processing regime. The algorithm implies origination of the activation energy curve from accurate ‘reference’ measurements of the drying rate under natural convection conditions. Mass transfer coefficients for the apple ring samples required for the model implementation were obtained in a series of experiments under natural and forced conditions. These were compared to the values of mass transfer coefficients obtained from numerical simulation using COMSOL Multiphysics® software. The study extends the application of REA for the limiting simplest case of convective drying of thick samples under ambient temperature conditions.

中文翻译：

---

利用 REA 方法在环境温度下对流干燥苹果环

摘要 本研究的重点是在环境温度下通过空气对流干燥苹果年轮。集总反应工程方法 (REA) 模型已被用于确定强制对流下苹果环的干燥速率，这被认为是一种正常的加工方式。该算法暗示活化能曲线源自自然对流条件下干燥速率的准确“参考”测量值。模型实现所需的苹果环样品的传质系数是在自然和强制条件下的一系列实验中获得的。将这些值与使用 COMSOL Multiphysics® 软件通过数值模拟获得的传质系数值进行比较。