The Use of Radial-Based Artificial Neural Networks in Modelling Drying Kinetics

Abstract

Drying method is preferred in agricultural products since it provides advantages in many processes such as increasing the strength of products, transporting and storing. It is necessary to estimate the drying behavior of the products in order to achieve the best drying without reducing the product quality. For this reason, many numerical drying models have been developed to estimate the drying kinetics of the products. Recently, artificial neural networks have been widely used for the development of these models. Artificial neural networks are mathematical models that work in a similar way to natural neuron cells. Radial based artificial neural networks are radial based activation functions in the transition to the hidden layer unlike other networks. In this study, modeling of drying kinetics with radial based networks was investigated. For the experiment, red hot pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) was dipped in boiled water and microwave pretreatments and, then dried in the oven at 65°C. The absorbable moisture values were calculated during the drying period. The radial based artificial neural network models were trained with the drying time values as input and the absorbable moisture values as output. The study was carried out with two data sets including all data and only the average. In trainings with all data, R value of the best model was calculated as 0.9566. R was calculated as 0.9998 with average data.