Numerical Modeling of the Process of Drying Biomaterials After Pulsed Electric Field Treatment Using a System of Temperature, Moisture, and Pressure Equations

Abstract

A new method is described to determine the kinetic coefficients for temperature, moisture, and pressure potentials based on experimental data of a curve for drying capillary-porous bodies. This method includes numerical modeling of the problem of calculating the potential of transfer of temperature, moisture, and pressure in the process of drying based on the procedure of using the finite element method in combination with the stepwise method of finite differences for a partial differential system, and an inverse problem formulation in the form of minimizing the residual function square from the obtained experimental curve of the moisture potential. Based on this method, the updated coefficients of kinetic potentials were found for many materials after pulsed electric field treatment and dependence curves were restored for temperature and pressure potentials that were not observed in the experiment. The presented approach is quite useful for the study of the mechanism of a drying process with pulsed electric field pretreatment, and for the explanation of the occurring effects, and the updated kinetic coefficients based on experimental data contribute to the substantiation of the processes occurring in the object of drying.