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Cold Plasma: A Novel Pretreatment Method for the Drying of Canola Seeds: Kinetics Study and Superposition Modeling

Accurate investigation of kinetics and development of high-precision drying models will help better studying the drying process by identifying effective parameters. Present study investigates the application of cold plasma (CP), as a pretreatment process, in air drying of canola seeds. This may bring about some complication into the drying kinetics investigation. Canola seeds with an initial moisture content of 27.5±1% (dry basis) were exposed to CP for 0, 15, 30, and 60 s prior to fluidization by air at temperatures of 40, 50 and 60 °C in a pilot scale fluidized bed heated by a solar panel. The results showed a decreasing trend in drying time from 40 to 60 o C. The shortest drying time corresponds to samples dried at 60 o C with no CP pretreatment. The longest period however occurred for samples dried at 40 o C with 60 s of CP pretreatment. It was also observed the greatest effect of CP on reducing the drying time at temperatures of 40 and 50 °C was at the CP exposure time of 15 and 60 s, respectively. A reasonably accurate study of drying kinetics was accomplished using the superposition method. Accordingly, using experimental data, curves correspond to different drying conditions were plotted and in two steps these were shifted to a reference curve to acquire a final drying curve. The curve then was fitted to a second-order equation, and was validated using the experimental data. The correlation coefficients, mean square error and mean absolute error were 0.99, 0.03, and 0.023, respectively.