Secagem da raiz in natura de Chaptalianutans: influência da temperatura e avaliação de modelos matemáticos

Abstract

Chaptalia nutans, popularly known as língua de vaca or arnica do campo in Portuguese, is easily found throughout the American continent. In popular medicine, infusion of its roots has been used against fevers, lung diseases such as cough and bronchitis, skin diseases, herpes and syphilis, due to the action of the chemical compound of the coumarin group 7-O-β-D- glucopyranosyl-nutanocoumarin. The objective of this work was to analyze the kinetics of root drying in natura of Chaptalia nutans at different temperatures, and to adapt mathematical models to the experimental data. Statistical errors were applied as evaluation criterion of the applied models. It was found that the drying kinetics and the effective diffusivity values found with a literature, being 0,00013, 0,00027 and 0,00157cm2.min-1 for the temperatures of 50, 65 and 80 °C, respectively. Among the models studied, or Midilli was the one that best represented the behavior of the experimental data, followed by the Page model.