Effect of pre-treatments on drying characteristics of Chinese jujube (Zizyphus jujuba Miller)

Chinese jujube is delicious and nourishing fruit.However,fresh Chinese jujube is liable to rot and drying is a necessary process.Traditional drying is a time-consuming task due to the thick cuticle of Chinese jujube.To improve its drying efficiency,fresh Chinese jujube was pretreated with nine different methods prior to hot-air drying.Among these methods,dipping in 2%ethyl oleate plus 5%K_(2)CO_(3) for 10 min(alkaline emulsion of ethyl oleate,AEEO)was recommended for its time-saving effect,which was found more significant at lower drying temperatures.The beneficial effect was considered based on its cuticle destruction by AEEO pre-treatment.In the meantime,the drying process was divided into three stages;each of them obeyed the first order reaction kinetics.Activation energies for the first,second and third stages of control over jujube drying were 41.45 kJ/mol,35.24 kJ/mol and 49.52 kJ/mol,and reduced by 20.9%,22.1%and 29.0%,respectively,after AEEO pre-treatment,and the drying process was well predicted by Midilli et al.model.In view of browning during drying at higher temperatures,AEEO pretreated jujube was suggested to be dried at 60°C.This finding was considered to be helpful to the industrial drying of Chinese jujube.