Abstract

Noni seeds have been used for years as an important medicinal source, with wide use in the pharmaceutical and food industry. Drying is a fundamental process in the post-harvest stages, where it enables the safe storage of the product. Therefore, the present study aimed to fit different mathematical models to experimental data of drying kinetics of noni seeds, determine the effective diffusion coefficient and obtain the activation energy for the process during drying under different conditions of air temperature. The experiment used noni seeds with initial moisture content of 0.46 (decimal, d.b.) and dehydrated up to equilibrium moisture content. Drying was conducted under different controlled conditions of temperature, 40; 50; 60; 70 and 80 ºC and relative humidity, 24.4; 16.0; 9.9; 5.7 and 3.3%, respectively. Eleven mathematical models were fitted to the experimental data. The parameters to evaluate the fitting of the mathematical models were mean relative error (P), mean estimated error (SE), coefficient of determination (R²), Chi-square test (c²), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Schwarz’s Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Considering the fitting criteria, the model Two Terms was selected to describe the drying kinetics of noni seeds. Effective diffusion coefficient ranged from 8.70 to 23.71 × 10^-10 m² s^-1 and its relationship with drying temperature can be described by the Arrhenius equation. The activation energy for noni seeds drying was 24.20 kJ mol^-1 for the studied temperature range.

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