Abstract

The rehydration process has been traditionally modeled by Fick's second law; however, due to the poor goodness of fit, empirical models such as Peleg's and Weibull models have been implemented. The aim of this work was to demonstrate that the anomalous diffusion model based on fractional calculus can be used to model rehydration process and simultaneously provide a phenomenological understanding of the process. The food matrices assessed were aloe vera, apple, Chilean papaya, and bell peppers rehydrated at 20, 40, and 60 degrees C. The results showed that the anomalous diffusion model was not only able to improve the goodness of fit of rehydration data (R-2 >.99), but also that D-eff can be used under different temperatures given the goodness of fit of the Arrhenius model (R-2 >.88) compared with empirical and Fick's models. Finally, an anomalous diffusion model based on fractional calculus can be successfully used to model the rehydration process in food materials.