Design and development of resistance heating apparatus‐cum‐solar drying system for enhancing fish drying rate

Abstract

Resistance heating is unique to thermic food manufacturing applications, particularly getting popularity across the food sector. Here, a prototype ohmic heating device over a capability of 6.25 kg/hr has been developed to process fish. The developed device was used combined with PID-controlled solar dryer, and the parameters have been optimized by using central composite rotatable design and artificial neural network (ANN). During the processing of hybrid drying (ohmic heating with solar drying), the selected input variables were voltage (160-200 V), salt concentration (0-2%), solar drying temperature (40-72 C), and loading density (109-190 g) to improve the drying rate (drying time, overall temperature, and final moisture content). The designed ohmic heater reduced the moisture in fish muscles from 348.5% (db) to 260.91% at the first stage of drying under optimum conditions (180 V ohmic voltage and 1% salt concentration) in the time interval of 165-300 s for all experiments, followed by final moisture content, which was reduced to 12.66% (db), and the overall drying rate was improved to 2.73 g/min at the second stage of solar drying during optimum conditions (72 C temperature and 0.672 cm 2 load density).The R 2 (determination coefficient 0.96-0.94) values, SSE (sum of square error values 0.15-025) values, and MSE (mean square values 1-8.7) were more significant for RSM than ANN. This developed resistance heating apparatus for enhancing fish drying rate and also reduced post-harvest losses, and it is considered to be a good technology for drying the fish and making a fish powder that can be further used for value-added product. Practical ApplicationsThe fish comes readily digestible; on the other hand, extremely spoilable accordingly, and fish cannot be gathered for a longer time below atmosphere circumstance, leading to enormous reap as well as commercial disadvantage. The processing of fish may impede against spoiling before reaching the consumers. Dehydration becomes a more frequent also essential approach to post-processing conservation. Fish dehydration must be promoted by farmers' stage in addition to micro-industry scale by way of convenience to frozen food locker. Hybrid or combined drying is an attraction for its nutritive values retention, uniformity of drying, reducing the microbial load, and improving product storage properties. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop an ohmic device accompanied by solar drying for preservation of Rohu fish muscles under ambient condition.

Hot-Air Drying Characteristics of Sea Cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) and Its Rehydration Properties

“…. MC of the samples during drying process was calculated by the following equation which was the definition employed by some other authors in the literature [12][13][14]:…”

Microwave vacuum drying of pomegranate peel: Evaluation of specific energy consumption and quality attributes by response surface methodology and artificial neural network

“…However, extreme microwave radiation could result in severe degradation of heat‐sensitive compounds. Quality aspects of MWV dried food products have been stated similar to freeze‐dried food compounds (Lal et al., 2021; Richa et al., 2021; Scaman et al., 2014). However, with regard to time of drying, MWV drying method is efficient over freeze‐drying.…”

The Impact of Drying and Salting on the Fish Resilience and Quality

“…Even if the fat can cause rancidity, if the process has not continued, it will produce an aroma that consumers like. Freshly produced or processed salty fish tends to be preferred by consumers because there are no physical deviations such as odors (Cui et al, 2021;Richa et al, 2022). Change or decomposition of fat can affect the smell and taste of a food ingredient, especially in times of deviation, so fat damage can reduce nutritional value and cause deviations in smell and taste (Azizah et al, 2022;Pomegranate et al, 2022).…”