Drying Characteristics of Aloevera and Curry leaves using microwave

A microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that heats food by dielectric heating.Samples of Aloe vera of known weight (~200 grams) with initial moisture content ranging from 0.985 to 0.99 were subjected to drying in a microwave oven at five different output powers 180W 360W 540W 720W 900W. The drying process was carried out for different time periods till the final moisture content reaches 0.015 to 0.002 on wet basis. The drying data were fitted to ten different layer models and we observed that the page model is the best fit with R2 SSE ranging between 0.9965 to 0.9999 & 0.000698 to 0.04338 respectively. Also the diffusivity coefficients were determined for Aloe vera at different microwave output powers using Fick’s equation.