Modelling the drying kinetics of apple (Golab variety): fractional calculus vs semi-empirical models

In this work, two novel models have been proposed based on semi-empirical and factional calculus incorporating non-integer time derivatives in the Fick’s first law of anomalous diffusion. The experimental data has collected from literature 15 kinetics investigated a convective dryer under effect temperatures ranging 40 to 80 °C at 10 interval, thickness slices 2 6 mm interval. dataset was apple (Golab variety). Results study were compared with set 64 thin-layer drying previously published literature. fitting capability using mean root square error MRMSE (%) all global determination coefficient R 2. All models’ constants coefficients optimised by dragonfly algorithm programmed MATLAB software. show that fractional model is highly capable describing curve ( 2) 0.99981, average (MRMSE) 0.43 % comparison best empirical R2 0.99968 0.61 %.