Mass Transfer During Osmotic Dehydration: Determination of Moisture and Solute Diffusion Coefficients from Concentration Profiles

Abstract

Mass transfer during osmotic dehydration was studied. The effective diffusion coefficients for water and solute diffusion were determined assuming osmotic dehydration to be governed by Fickian diffusion. Solution of Fick's law for unsteady-state mass transfer was used to estimate the effective diffusion coefficients. The average effective diffusion coefficients (D e ) obtained by this method could predict the moisture ( r 2 =0.95) and solid (( r 2 =0.96) content to a sufficient accuracy. A high degree of correlation was observed between predicted and experimental values of moisture and solid content.