Drying kinetics of oil palm trunk waste in control atmosphere and open air convection drying

The oil palm trunk chips were dried in a laboratory scale convective drying at two different operating conditions; open air fan drying and control atmosphere drying (25 °C and 80% relative humidity). The experimental drying data were used to estimate the drying kinetics and to select the suitable form of drying curves. Six different mathematical models such as Henderson–Pabis, Logarithmic, Midilli–Kucuk, Newton, Page, Wang–Singh models and the newly introduced modified Midilli–Kucuk model were applied to the experimental data and their co-efficient of regression, root mean square errors and sum of square error, were compared and predicted by non-linear regression analysis using the MATLAB R2011b (7.13.0.564) software. It was found that the proposed modified Midilli–Kucuk model could predict the drying rate curve when compared with the experimental data point for the drying of oil palm trunk chips.