variavel0=<b>Graziela Brusch Brinques</b> - grazibb@bol.com.br Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
<b>Ligia Damasceno Ferreira Marczak</b> - ligia@enq.ufrgs.br Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
<b>Keiko Wada</b> - Keiko@enq.ufrgs.br Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
<b>Isabel Cristina Tessaro</b> - isabel@enq.ufrgs.br Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
<b>Abstract.</b> Experimental and theoretical modeling of the soybean drying process in a fixed bed column have been studied in this work. The motivation of this study is the lack of data for effective mass diffusivity for soybean in the literature, in contrast with datas for others oleaginous, such rice for example. Experiments were performed to measure the mass variation of a fixed bed of soybean as a function of time for several air drying temperatures. From the equation of the radial profile of moisture, the experimental data were used to determine theoretically the effective mass diffusivity of water through the grain. The results shown that the mass diffusivity is a function of moisture contents in the grain and values of mass diffusivity were proposed.
<b>Keywords.</b> Grain drying, effective mass difusivity, soybeans grains, mass transfer.