Characteristics of Convective Drying of Pepino Fruit (Solanum muricatum Ait.): Application of Weibull Distribution

Elsa Uribe, Antonio Vega-Gálvez, Karina Di Scala, Romina Oyanadel, Jorge Saavedra Torrico, Margarita Miranda

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

71 Scopus citations

Abstract

The aim of this research was to study the behaviour of the drying kinetics of pepino fruit (Solanum muricatum Ait.) at five temperatures (50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 °C). In addition, desorption isotherms were determined at 20, 40 and 60 °C over a water activity range from 0.10 to 0.90. The Guggenheim, Anderson and de Boer model was suitable to depict the desorption data. A monolayer moisture content from 0.10 to 0.14 g water g -1 d. m. was reported. The equations of Newton, Henderson-Pabis, Modified Page, Wang-Singh, Modified Henderson-Pabis, Logarithmic as well as standardised Weibull were tested for modelling drying kinetics. Besides, Fick's second law model was used to calculate the water diffusion coefficient which increased with temperature from 2.55 to 7.29 × 10 -10 m 2 s -1, with estimated activation energy of 27.11 kJ mol -1. The goodness of fit of the models was evaluated using sum squared error and chi-square statistical tests. The comparison of the experimental moisture values with respect to the calculated values showed that the standardised Weibull model presented the best goodness of fit, showing that this equation is very accurate for simulating drying kinetics for further optimisation of drying times.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1349-1356
Number of pages8
JournalFood and Bioprocess Technology
Volume4
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2011

Keywords

  • Desorption
  • Drying kinetics
  • Modelling
  • Pepino fruit
  • Standardised Weibull model

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