WATER ABSORPTION KINETICS OF SELECTED COWPEA VARIETIES

This work was carried out to know the water absorption kinetics of selected cowpea varieties, Peleg’s equation was used to predict water absorption kinetics of the selected cowpea varieties. Water absorption profile of the selected cowpea varieties at various soaking temperature and linear fit of Peleg’s constants to water absorption data from soaking of the selected cowpea varieties were obtained. The values of Peleg’s constant were: K1(0.2903, 0.1589 and 0.1111) for black beans and K2 (56.459, 24.059 and 1.167), for brown eye beans K1 (0.0583, 0.0965 and 0.285) and K2 (3.896, 1.184 and 15.601), for honey beans K1 (0.157, 0.0732 and 0.1338) and K2 (27.335, 0.633 and 2.459) and for black eye beans K1 (0.0144, 0.0761 and 0.1436) and K2 (8.881, 5.088 and 2.52) at 30, 40 and 500C respectively. from the results the values of K2 and K1 increased with increasing soaking temperature, that is for honey beans, brown eye beans and black eye beans as the temperature increases from 300C to 500C and decreases for black beans. This implies that capacity and rate of water absorption increases when the temperature increases.