K. Muthukumarappan et S. Gunasekaran, MOISTURE DIFFUSIVITY OF CORN KERNEL COMPONENTS DURING ADSORPTION .2. PERICAP, Transactions of the ASAE, 37(4), 1994, pp. 1269-1274
A corn kernel was modeled as a slab corn (corn without pericarp) an a
slab shell (pericarp), and mositure diffusivity of the pericarp was es
timated by optimizing the experimental and theoretical adsorption data
using a finite difference technique. The diffusion equations were sol
ved using the Crank-Nicolson scheme. Experimental data were obtained f
rom thin-layer moisture adsorption tests using two varieties of corn (
FR27 x MO17 and P3576) with and without pericarp. Air temperatures of
25, 30, 35, and 40-degrees-C each at 75, 80, and 90% relative humidity
were used. The mean moisture diffusivity of pericarp increased with a
ir temperature (0.355 x 109 to 0.553 x 10(-9) m2/h) and decreased lowe
r (about two orders of magnitude) than those of corn with and without
pericarp.