Degradation of ascorbic acid in drying process - A comparison of description methods

The degradation kinetics of ascorbic acid in food products is presented in the paper. Vibrofluidized method of drying was considered. Experiments were carried out for a model substance (silica gel) and agricultural products, namely: fresh green peas, potatoes and cabbage. Experimental data were desc ribed by means of three mathematical methods: a multilayer perceptron (MLP) model, a mathematical model of degradation kinetics of ascorbic acid and a hybrid model. The hybrid model connects neural computation with the mathem atical model. All approaches provide an excellent process description. In t he case of multilayer perceptron, the proposed method is simpler to impleme nt when compared to the mathematical and the hybrid methods.