Modeling of Diffusion with Shrinkage and Quality Investigation of Banana Foam Mat Drying

A diffusion model including shrinkage has been developed for predicting the change of moisture content in banana foam mats during drying. Two solution methods, moving boundary using variable grid and immobilizing boundary using the Lagrangian referential coordinate, were used in exploring their capabilities to predict the moisture change. Banana foam mats with initial foam densities of 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7 g/cm³ were dried at 60, 70, and 80°C and superficial air velocity of 0.5 m/s. The qualities of the final products in terms of texture and microstructure were determined. The moving boundary method can predict the moisture content more accurately than the immobilizing boundary method especially in the case of low-density foam. The quality determinations showed that the initial foam density strongly affected hardness, crispness, and morphology of dried banana foam mats, whereas the drying temperature had no significant effect on those qualities.