Energy Engineering & Management

Due to thermal sensitivity, costs and importance of dying process for foods, it seems to be necessary looking for new optimal approaches which could consider effects of various parameters in this research, drying process of kohlrabi in a fluid bed, exposed to air and microwave, will be analyzed using response surface method. Microwave power, temperature and flow rate of inlet air will be studied in different values as three maim parameters. Optimal value of these parameters are  900watt, 60⁰C and 1800 SCFH for microwave power, temperature and flow rate of inlet air, respectively. In this condition kohlrabi will be dried in 7.62 minutes. The correlation coefficient of simulated model (R²) for drying time is 0.9995 which shows an excellent fit with the experimental data.