Technical report: numerical estimation of enlightenment phase of cracker during baking / Nur Fatihah Shahman, Nurul Najwa Mokhtar and Siti Nur Ainsyah Ghani

The topic of this project covers the study of the enlightenment phase of cracker during baking. Most of the researchers focused on solving the problem by experimental, while we decide to solve by mathematically. Baking air temperature, Ta (°C), cracker temperature, Tb (°C) baking time, t (minutes), ideal gas temperature, R (J/mol/K), energy of activation, Ea (kl /mol) and kinetic constant of enlightenment reaction, ko are involved in the enlightenment phase of cracker during baking. The suitable baking air temperature of the experiment is 180°C and 210°C. The kinetic approach is used to describe color formation during baking. Kinetics parameter estimated from the experiment which closed to actual baking condition. The resulting equations were solved using analytical solution and appropriate numerical methods which are Explicit Euler's method and Fourth-Order Runge-Kutta (RK4) method. Then the validated approximated solution, analytical solution and experimental data were obtained in order to compare the relative errors. The error accuracy of the RK4 method is higher compared to Explicit Euler's method. This project identifies the effect Ea and ko parameter on the lightness, L* variation of the cracker surface. This parametric study shows that by increasing the value of the Ea, the lightness increase slowly. While, the lightness increase rapidly as the value of ko parameter is increased.