convective drying of solids, this solution is valid only for the falling rate period when the drying process is controlled by internal moisture diffusion for slice moisture content below the critical value. Therefore, the diffusivity must be identified from Eq. (14) by setting the initial moisture content to the critical value Xcr and by setting the drying time to zero when the mean moisture content of the sample reaches that critical moisture content.
To take shrinkage into account in Eq. (14), the sample thick- ness must be considered as a function of time and l(t) is so obtained from shrinkage measurements. Eq. (14) becomes (Crank, 1975):