1997 Volume 59 Issue 3 Pages 5-11
In this paper, the density, specific heat and the thermal diffusivity of sweet potato starch and corn starch gels were measured and their corresponding effective thermal conductivities were computed. The intrinsic thermal conductivities of these two kinds of starch were estimated by applying the series heat conduction model to the gel. Then, these values were compared with those of potato starch (Shen et al., 1995) and wheat starch (Oshita et al., 1991). The result showed that the percentage of variation between maximum and minimum values were 28% (density), 30% (specific heat), 27% (thermal conductivity). The maximum relative error of the effective thermal conductivities of these gel was computed to be 6.86%. Hence, these difference are not from the experimental error but due to the different kinds of starch used.
