Microtomographic investigation of a yeast grain porous structure Original Research Article

Drying behavior of baker’s yeast depends on the internal structure of the grain. In this paper, investigation of the porous structure of a dry grain using X-ray microtomography is presented. The resulting data are treated to deduce pore network characteristics for drying modeling . The treatment algorithm is based on segmentation kriging and medial axis calculation by thinning. Complementary informations are also calculated using auto-correlation function. The complete procedure is first tested on a virtual solid and then applied to yeast. The results present a large pore size distribution and a high connectivity between the pores. Both those effects can partially be attributed to the choice of the algorithms to deduce the pore network.