Umudike Journal of Engineering and Technology

A mechanistic model was developed from fundamental law of mass diffusion with the aim of describing rate of water loss during osmotic dehydration of red bell pepper at different operating conditions. The developed model was solved analytically (separation of variables technique) and this resulted to Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE). Then, integral properties were adopted to calculate Fourier coefficients of the series. Computer codes were developed in MATLAB for analytical procedure to simulate water loss at various drying operating conditions. The simulated results were compared with experimental data and correlation coefficient for the results gave high values ranging from 0.955 to 0.997. It was observed that simulated results agreed with the experimental. The simulated results could be further used in research and development centre for the design, control and optimization of osmotic dehydration of bell pepper.