Drying kinetics of prickly pear fruit (Opuntia ficus indica) (original) (raw)
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Modelling of the Drying Kinetics of Opuntia Ficus Indica Fruits and Cladodes
International Journal of Food Engineering, 2010
The effect of the drying rates of fruit and cladode of Opuntia Ficus Indica was examined at different temperatures. The experimental drying curves show only a falling drying rate period. The values of drying rate of prickly pear (fruit and cladode) almost doubled when the drying temperature was increased from 40 to 60°C. The experimental drying data were applied to various drying equation (Logarithmic; Wang and Singh, Henderson and Pabis, MMF model and Midilli equation). Midilli equation was optimal for characterizing drying behaviour of prickly pear for the whole range of temperature with a correlation coefficient of 99.99% for the fruit and the cladode and a standard error of 0.0015 for the fruit and 0.0017 for the cladode.
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Sun-dried pears of Portuguese variety S. Bartolomeu are relatively small fruits with peculiar organolephtic characteristics. The open sun drying has some disadvantages related with drying efficiency and food safety. However the drying with an economic and friendly energy source is an important characteristic of the drying methods and therefore several attempts have been made to develop processes using solar drying. The present work studies two drying methods, namely solar stove and tunnel drying, with the advantages of using the solar energy and simultaneously reducing the exposure of fruits to contamination agents. Both processes were conducted in two consecutive years to analyse if the behaviour of each drying method shows evidence of a similar pattern. The results enable us to conclude that the variation of normalized moisture of pears with the drying time follows a linear relationship in the solar stove while an exponential decay is observed in the tunnel drying. Despite the dif...