Ricerc@Sapienza

As a result of high doses of paramagnetic gadolinium (Gd) chelates administered in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exams, their unmetabolized excretion, and insufficient removal in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), large amounts of anthropogenic Gd (Gdanth) are released into surface water. The upward trend of gadolinium-based contrast agent (Gd-CA) administrations is expected to continue growing and consequently higher and higher anthropogenic Gd concentrations are annually recorded in water resources, which can pose a great threat to aquatic organisms and human beings.

We exploit prediction capabilities of the moving-boundary model for food isothermal drying proposed in Adrover et al. (2019). We apply the model to two different sets of literature experimental data resulting from the air-drying process of eggplant cylinders (two-dimensional problem) and potatoes slices (three-dimensional problem). These two food materials, both exhibiting non-ideal shrinkage, are characterized by very different “calibration curves“ i.e. different behaviours of volume reduction V/V0as a function of the rescaled moisture content X/X0.