Sensitivity analysis of parameters affecting the drying behaviour of durum wheat pasta Original Research Article

In this work, a comprehensive model of pasta drying combining Neumann boundary conditions, differential shrinkage and with consideration of the constant drying rate period and falling drying rate period was investigated through sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. Results confirmed that shrinkage, moisture loss and drying rate during the constant drying rate period and external resistance to mass transfer did not have a significant impact on the predicted required drying time. The predicted required drying time was influenced predominantly by the effective moisture diffusion coefficient. A correlation to estimate the effective moisture diffusion coefficient was developed from published values and was used to predict the required drying time with an uncertainty of ±3.5 h at a 90% confidence interval. Since this magnitude of uncertainty is unreasonable for most industrial uses, accurate data collection of effective moisture diffusivity should be viewed as a major objective in pasta drying research.