Osmotic dehydration of pumpkin (cucurbita moschata) in sucrose and sucrose-salt solutions. effect of solution composition and sample size

L.L. CHAILLOU; M.F.KVAPIL; R.H. MASCHERONI; A.G. QUESTA

LATIN AMERICAN APPLIED RESEARCH

PLAPIQUI(UNS-CONICET)

Lugar: Bahia Blanca; Año: 2020 vol. 50 p. 241 - 246

0327-0793

Mass transfer during osmotic dehydra-tion (OD) of Anco pumpkin cubes was studied as a function of sample size and composition and concen-tration of sucrose dehydrating solution. Models of Az-uara and Hawkes & Flink were adjusted to the exper-imental data and optimal dehydrating conditions could be specified. For equal solutes concentration, higher weight losses were reached for smaller size samples. The addition of 2% NaCl increased Water Loss (WL) and lowered Solids Gain (SG) for the solu-tion of higher sucrose content. Prediction capacity of the simplified models was very good under the tested working conditions. In brief, OD can be optimized us-ing 1 cm side cubes dehydrated in binary or ternary solutions at the higher sucrose content (55ºBx), max-imizing WL and minimizing SG.