Drying kinetics of papaya fruit slices at 40, 50 and 60°C were investigated in a laboratory cabinet dryer. A fuzzy logic table look-up scheme consists of three input variables with 10, 5 and 4 fuzzy sets as well as one output consisting 21 fuzzy sets was designed and used to model the drying kinetics. Mamdani’s fuzzy inference system (FIS) with 56 independent rules was used to conduct fuzzy set operations. It was found that the drying process occurred in a falling rate over the drying duration. The effective diffusivity of papaya slices was within the range of 6.93×10-10 to 1.50×10-9 m2/s over the temperature range. The activation energy was 32.5 kJ/mol, indicated the effect of temperature on the diffusivity. The high values of R2 (0.977-0.999) in addition with the low values of RMSE (0.013-0.065) obtained for the designed FIS, indicated the high performance of fuzzy logic table look-up scheme to model the drying kinetics of thin-layer papaya slices.

Keywords