K. Muthukumarappan et S. Gunasekaran, MOISTURE DIFFUSIVITY OF CORN KERNEL COMPONENTS DURING ABSORPTION .3. SOFT AND HARD ENDOSPERMS, Transactions of the ASAE, 37(4), 1994, pp. 1275-1280
A finite element model was developed to determine the moisture diffusi
vity of soft and hard endosperms of a corn kernel. The diffusivities w
ere estimated by optimizing the experimental and model predicted moist
ure adsorption data. The mean moisture diffusivity of both the endospe
rsm increased with increasing air temperature, but decreased with incr
easing relative humidity. Moisture diffusivity of soft endosperm (0.51
x 10(-7) to 1.51 x 10(-7) m2/h) was higher than that of hard endosper
m (0.29 x 10(-7) to 0.84 x 10(-7) m2/h).