Author(s)

Eloi Salmwendé Tiendrebeogo^1,2,3*, Alfa Oumar Dissa¹, Fabien Cherblanc², Issakha Youm³, Jean-Claude Bénet², Aboubacar Compaoré¹, Jean Koulidiati¹

¹Laboratoire de Physique et de Chimie de L’environnement (LPCE), Université de Ouagadougou, Oua-gadougou, Burkina Faso.
²Laboratoire de Mécanique et génie Civil (LMGC), CNRS, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France.
³Centre de Recherchesur les Energies Renouvelables (CERER), Université Cheick Anta Diop, Dakar, Sénégal.

The sorption behaviour and water transport mechanisms inside Spirulina platensis samples were experimentally analysed during isothermal drying at 25℃ and 50℃. Two different products grown in semi-industrial farms from Burkina Faso and France with initial water contents respectively of the range from 2.73 kg _w /kg _dm to 3.12 kg _w /kg _dm were characterized. A novel procedure has been developed to determine the water content profiles inside samples during isothermal drying. At both temperatures, experimental results underlined that the physical properties of Spirulina are not sensitive to the geographical origin, Burkina-Faso or France. To keep Spirulina at an water activity below 0.6 in order to preserve it from micro-organisms development, sorption isotherm curves show that a sufficient requirement is to lower the water content until an upper limit of w = 0.075 db. The evolution of water transport coefficient as a function of water content highlights a monotonous exponential dependence with a transport coefficient ranging from 1.70 × 10^–10 to 94 × 10^–10 m²/s. The contribution of solid phase shrinkage to the transport of water is negligible for the last drying steps.

i>Spirulina platensis, Isotherm Desorption, Stump, Water Content, Water Transport Coefficient

Tiendrebeogo, E. , Dissa, A. , Cherblanc, F. , Youm, I. , Bénet, J. , Compaoré, A. and Koulidiati, J. (2015) Characterization of Two Different Stumps of Spirulina platensis Drying: Assessment of Water Transport Coefficient. Food and Nutrition Sciences, 6, 1437-1449. doi: 10.4236/fns.2015.615148.