Mass Transfer and Texture Variation during Osmotic Dehydration of Pears

FERRARI, CRISTHIANI CAROLINE; ARBALLO, JAVIER RAMIRO; MASCHERONI, RODOLFO HORACIO

Montréal / Quebec

Congreso; 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering; 2009

École Polytechnique de Montréal, McGill University and Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE)

Ten mm thick half slices of Packham?s Triumph pears were osmotically dehydrated in aqueous solutions, held at 30 ºC, of sucrose or sorbitol of 40 or 60 ºBrix and in combinations of both solutes for periods of up to 24 h. Mass transfer was characterized by water and weight loss and soluble solids gain and was modeled through simple analytical or empirical models, which gave good correlation to experimental data. The assays of fracture stress showed that fruits texture was markedly affected by the osmotic process, with a significant reduction of this property with the increase of dehydration time, mainly when sorbitol was used.