Convective drying kinetics of osmotically pre-treated potato slices

Abstract

In the food industry, convective drying is a widely used method due to its applicability to many food materials. Besides this advantage of the convective drying method, there are several shortcomings related to the rehydration capacity, low quality of dried material, loss of color, flavour, and nutrient of the final dried materials. In this paper, the convective drying kinetics of osmotically pre-treated potato slices (variety Carrera) were analyzed. Thin-layer drying kinetics of potato slices at four drying air temperatures 40, 50, 60 and 70°C and two drying air velocities 1 and 2 ms-1 were obtained on the experimental setup. For an approximation of the experimental data with regard to the moisture ratio three thin-layers drying, models from scientific literature and the model of Mitrevski et al., were used. For each model and data set the statistical performance index, ph chi-squared, and ch2, values were calculated and models were ranked afterward.