3.6 Drying Kinetics Analysis
Figure 4D shows the time-dependent drying kinetics of the prepared SA/Gel and A-SA-Gel hydrogel samples in the form of the (Wm - Wt ) / (Wm - Wo ) curves versus time, at drying temperature of 37°C. The drying curves showed that the drying ratio of all of groups increased with the increase of time, and become to steady state after 130 min. The drying ratio of the SA/Gel sample was faster than that of the A-SA-Gel sample. For example, the fraction of water removed from the SA/Gel sample during the first 15 min of drying period was 35.22%, while this fraction for the A-SA-Gel sample was 26.06%.