Dehydration of salmon (Atlantic salmon), beef, and apple (Granny Smith) using Refractance window™: Effect on diffusion behavior, texture, and color changes

Effects of Infrared-Assisted Refractance Window™ Drying on the Drying Kinetics, Microstructure, and Color of Physalis Fruit Purée

“…Regarding drying kinetics, all the curves presented an exponential decay behavior and the influence of drying temperature is again remarkable (Figure 2). The same tendency has been presented in other reports [10][11][12][13], where a decrease in process time and an increase in drying rate occurred with an increase in the drying temperature. While the drying times to reach equilibrium moisture content around 10% varied from 75 to 180 min.…”

“…Effective diffusivities values were in the range of 2.74 to 13.40 × 10 −10 m 2 /s, in Table 2 it can be observed that as the process temperature raises, there is a consequent increase in the effective diffusivity, and this behavior and order of magnitude has been reported for other RW™ drying methods, such as reported [10] for mango flakes (D eff : 5.43-9.33 × 10 −10 m 2 /s); [11] apple slices (D eff : 2.5-7.14 × 10 −10 m 2 /s); [12] apple slices (D eff : 1.25-14.3 × 10 −10 m 2 /s), salmon tissue (D eff : 1.24-3.09 × 10 −10 m 2 /s) and beef slices (D eff : 1.25-3.86 × 10 −10 m 2 /s); [17] mango pulp (D eff : 7.0-11.0 × 10 −9 m 2 /s); [18] yam slices (D eff : 1.94-2.54 × 10 −9 m 2 /s); [19] papaya purée (D eff : 4.25-7.68 × 10 −10 m 2 /s), and [20] cucumber fruit slices (D eff : 1.94-2.54 × 10 −9 m 2 /s). It needs to be mentioned that D eff values of previous researches varied because of different drying temperature, sample moisture content, application of pre-treatments and Mylar™ thickness.…”

“…This change was expressed in its smooth surface towards a rougher one, obtaining a better differentiation of the parenchymal tissue, it is also possible to observe that the IRassisted RW™ drying caused an increase in the water extraction. In addition, the quality of the end products by RW™ is higher as compared with conventional drying methods [12]. Figure 4D-F shows dried Physalis purée peel by IR-assisted RW™ drying method, where these drying experiments maintained the tendency to compare it with the fresh Physalis purée peel ( Figure 3A) obtaining a rough surface, with an evident loss of water from the cells.…”

“…Furthermore, this study confirmed again that temperature is one of the main drying operational variables for any drying method, along with IR-assistance also affecting significantly the drying process. Thus, information obtained also can be important for the next hybrid dryer performance taking into account food quality as well as economic costs [12].…”

“…However, regarding the statistical values obtained, Midilli-Kucuk (0.005 ≤ RMSE ≤ 0.012; 0.001 ≤ χ 2 ≤ 0.004 and 0.997 ≤ R 2 ≤ 0.999) and Page (0.002 ≤ RMSE ≤ 0.021; 0.001 ≤ χ 2 ≤ 0.003 and 0.991 ≤ R 2 ≤ 0.999) models showed the best-fit quality on experimental data, for non-assisted RW™ and Infrared-assisted RW™ drying, respectively. Some researchers have attained good outcome when applying both Midilli-Kucuk and Page models on the drying kinetics of different food subjected to different hybrid drying method [9,28,29] as well as the RW™ drying method [12,13]. Always bearing in mind the use of the experimental data or any of the developed models to calculate drying time to reach equilibrium moisture content gives results that differ slightly in magnitude.…”