Traditional thermal methods of drying food have often led to loss of flavours, nutrients, vitamins, etc., which encourages non-thermal pretreatments such as osmotic dehydration (OD) and/or high electric field (HEF...Traditional thermal methods of drying food have often led to loss of flavours, nutrients, vitamins, etc., which encourages non-thermal pretreatments such as osmotic dehydration (OD) and/or high electric field (HEF) application to improve the overall product quality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of osmotic dehydration (50% sucrose) with high electric field strengths of 0.5 and 1.0 kV/cm as pretreatments on the drying kinetics and mass transfer of green apples during convective drying at 65 ~C and microwave drying at 1 W/g. The added value of the OD and HEF on the drying kinetics, and the effective mass transfer coefficients of the subsequent drying methods were investigated through this research. The efficacy of these pre-treatments was assessed and compared using cell disintegration index, product texture and thus bring forth new correlations between these pre-treatments and the cell disintegration index using dielectric spectroscopy and its effect on the product texture.展开更多
文摘Traditional thermal methods of drying food have often led to loss of flavours, nutrients, vitamins, etc., which encourages non-thermal pretreatments such as osmotic dehydration (OD) and/or high electric field (HEF) application to improve the overall product quality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of osmotic dehydration (50% sucrose) with high electric field strengths of 0.5 and 1.0 kV/cm as pretreatments on the drying kinetics and mass transfer of green apples during convective drying at 65 ~C and microwave drying at 1 W/g. The added value of the OD and HEF on the drying kinetics, and the effective mass transfer coefficients of the subsequent drying methods were investigated through this research. The efficacy of these pre-treatments was assessed and compared using cell disintegration index, product texture and thus bring forth new correlations between these pre-treatments and the cell disintegration index using dielectric spectroscopy and its effect on the product texture.