Microwave drying of mango ginger (Curcuma amada Roxb): prediction of drying kinetics by mathematical modelling and artificial neural network

Summary Curcuma amada (Mango ginger) was dried at four different power levels ranging 315–800 W to determine the effect of microwave power on moisture content, moisture ratio, drying rate, drying time and effective diffusivity. Among the fifteen thin layer drying models considered for evaluating the drying behaviour, the semi‐empirical Midilli et al. , model described the drying kinetics very well with R 2 > 0.999. Drying rate and effective diffusivity increased as the microwave power output increased. Activation energy was estimated by a modified Arrhenius type equation and found to be 21.6 kW kg −1 . A feed‐forward artificial neural network using back‐propagation algorithm was also employed to predict the moisture content during MW drying and found adequate to predict the drying kinetics with R 2 of 0.985.