Sorption isotherm of agricultural residue of orange bagasse.

Wet bagasse can be used as an adsorbent in effluent treatment process. However, before its use a previous drying is necessary. The water activity is an important parameter that affects the fermentation process, and thus its determination becomes most important in order to store this adsorbent. Thus, the objective of this work is to determine the sorption isotherms of orange bagasse at 25, 35 and 50 °C temperatures in order to correlate the moisture with a water activity. The equilibrium moisture content was determined by the static method using salts solution for a 10-80% relative humidity range. The following models were fitted to the experimental data: Henderson, Chung-Pfost, Modified Henderson, Halsey, Luikov and Motta Lima. All models results followed a sigmodal-type function. The equilibrium data for the orange bagasse were better represented by the Luikov and Halsey models.