Modeling grains hydration considering volumetric variations of spherical and elliptical geometries

Abstract

Several models have been developed for both describing the hydration and drying of grains. According to the literature, one of the aspects not yet sufficiently treated in the modeling is the volumetric variation of the grains in these processes. In this work we propose modeling the hydration phenomena in beans addressing the volumetric expansion of the grain in an ellipsoidal, and describe the methodology for the measurement of the expansion considering the variation in the three orthogonal axes of the grain. The hydration kinetic curves obtained experimentally were described with success and the proposed model adjusted well to the experimental data.