DrYFiT: An Excel Freeware Tool to Describe Thin Layer Drying of Foods

Abstract

We introduced DrYFiT (drying data fitting tool), a Microsoft Excel freeware tool to be used for modeling thin-layer drying of foods, which is available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ouompmNkmdmw1KMTJUnY0t8dJqSJ9iKv?usp=drive_link. There are 12 models in the tool and it can be used without any modeling and programming skills. Time and moisture ratio data can be entered and one of models available (one at a time) can be selected to describe the drying data. Parameter values, standard error of the parameters, p value and a statement that indicates whether the parameter is statistically significant or not (α = 0.05) are reported. Moreover, R², adjusted R² and root mean square error values are calculated for each model. Users can instantaneously observe the experimental data and the model fit on the same graph. Residual plot is given next to this graph. It is possible for the users to have the results of all models applied to drying data within a couple of minutes. The results of DrYFiT were compared with some popular software programs used for nonlinear regression and identical values (parameters, standard errors, p values, goodness-of-fit statistics) were obtained for 40 datasets.