Drying kinetics model of fermented soybean meal using hot air-drying

Abstract

The aim of this research was to model the hot air-drying (HAD) of fermented soybean meal (FSBM) containing probiotic Enterococcus faecium . The HAD was performed to reduce the moisture content of the FSBM. The effects of drying temperature on cell viability and moisture content were investigated. Moisture content decreased rapidly with increasing drying temperature. This probiotic strain’s cell viability slightly decreased at drying temperatures lower than 50°C and was greatly decreased at 55°C. Four mathematical models were applied to describe its drying kinetics, revealing that the Page model was the best fit for characterizing the drying kinetics during drying of FSBM, with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9996. Moreover, the Page model provided the lowest root mean square error (RSME) and chi-square (X2) and the highest modeling efficiency