.Diffusion of carbon dioxide in fruits during cold storage in modified atmosphere

BERTOLA NORA ; CHAVES A; ZARITZKY NOEMI.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 1990 vol. 25 p. 318 - 327

0950-5423

Treatments with 20% C02 of tomato fruit produced a beneficial extension of storagelife. The diffusion of CO2 in tomato (Lycopersicon esculenturn Mill) cv. Platense wasmeasured chromatographically and the concentration profiles in the internal gaseousatmosphere of the fruit were determined for non-steady state conditions to establishminimum treatment times that can ensure adequate penetration of the gas.The effective diffusivity of C02 in the tissue was determined by fitting concentrationdata, obtained from experiments with whole fruit without skin, to the non-steady statesolution of the diffusion equation, assuming negligible external mass transfer resistance.The diffusivity was modelled using Maxwell-Eucken expressions, taking accountof the heterogeneous structure of the tissue.The resistance of the fruit skin was evaluated using whole fruits with the stem scarcovered with paraffin and fitting experimental data to the solution in terms of mass Biotnumber; the specific resistance of the peel was some 200 times greater than that of thestem scar.