Application of foam-mat drying with egg white for carrageenan: drying rate and product quality aspects

Abstract

Drying is a significant step in the production of carrageenan. However, current drying process still deals with too long drying time and carrageenan quality degradation. The foam mat drying is an option to speed up drying process as well as retaining carrageenan quality. In this case, the carrageenan was mixed with egg white (albumin) as foaming agent and methyl cellulose for foam stabilizer. The foam will break the carrageenan gels and creates the porous structure resulting higher surface area for water transfer. This research studied the effect of egg white and methyl cellulose on carrageenan drying at various air temperature, and thickness. As a response, the water content versus time was observed and the drying rate was estimated. Meanwhile, the carrageenan texture was verified by X-RD (X-Ray Diffraction) and TEM (Transmission Electron Microscopy). Results showed that the presence of egg white stablized by methyl cellulose can speed up drying rate as well as retaining the crystalline structure of carrageenan. The higher albumin content, the faster drying rate. However, the addition of albumin and methyl cellulose restricted not more than 30 % in the mixture for keeping carrageenan quality and purity. By adding egg white 20 % and methyl cellulose 10 %, the water diffusion and drying rate can be two fold compared with carrageenan drying without foam. The improvement can be higher at the higher temperature and thinner carrageenan sheets.

Low Temperature Seaweed Drying Using Dehumidified Air

“…The result also showed that the increase air temperature can speed up water removal. With higher temperature, the water diffusivity increased 1,11 . Therefore, more water moved from inside to the surface of seaweed.…”

“…At higher temperature, the water movement from inside to the surface of seaweed increased. Then, the water evaporation can be higher 1,3,5,11 .…”

“…The driving force for water evaporation became higher (see Equation 1 -3). As consequence, the drying time can be shorter and product can be fully dried 1,11 . However, the air dehumidification effect was not significant at operational temperature upper 50 o C. Based on Figure 6, the air temperature, affected drying time significantly.…”

Foam-Mat Drying of Muskmelon

“…The drying rate of the foamed pulp at 50°C, 60°C and 70°C was found to be 0.559, 0.782 and 1.005 g min -1 , respectively, whereas for the unfoamed pulp it was 0.351, 0.524 and 0.592 g min -1 , respectively. This was due to the increased evaporation surface in foamed pulp, which facilitated the removal of large quantity of water [48]. At the final stages of drying, the drying rate started to decrease.…”

Foam mat drying of fig fruit: Optimization of foam composition and physicochemical properties of fig powder

“…In order to provide stable gas–liquid foam, high‐molecular weight polysaccharides such as xanthan gum (Muthukumaran et al, ; Salahi, Mohebbi, & Taghizadeh, ), arabic gum, starch, maltodextrin (MD) (Sramek, Schweiggert, Van Kampen, Carle, & Kohlus, ), pectins, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) (Branco, Kikuchi, Argandona, Moraes, & Haminiuk, ; Chaves, Barreto, Reis, & Kadam, ; Kaushal, Sharma, & Sharma, ; Wilson, Kadam, & Kaur, ), and methyl cellulose (Djaeni, Prasetyaningrum, Sasongko, Widayat, & Hii, ; Raharitsifa, Genovese, & Ratti, ) are used as foaming stabilizers, while protein‐structured components such as soy proteins (Rajkumar, Kailappan, Viswanathan, Raghavan, & Ratti, ; Sankat & Castaigne, ; Zheng, Liu, & Zhou, ), whey proteins (Sramek et al, ), casein, egg white (EW) (Abbasi & Azizpour, ; Kadam et al, ; Kandasamy, Varadharaju, Kalemullah, & Maladhi, ; Raharitsifa & Ratti, ; Wilson, Kadam, Chadha, Grewal, & Sharma, ), egg albumin (Franco, Perussello, Ellendersen, & Masson, ; Prakotmak, Soponronnarit, & Prachayawarakorn, ; Thuwapanichayanan, Prachayawarakorn, & Soponronnarit, ), and gelatin are used as foaming agents. Foaming stabilizers improve the foam stability by increasing the interfacial viscoelasticity, while foaming agents create air gaps and intramolecular hydrogen bonds in the foam.…”