Effect of needle number on drying rate of kiwi fruit in EHD drying process.docVIP

Vol.4, No.1, 1-5 (2013) Agricultural Sciences /10.4236/as.2013.41001 Effect of needle number on drying rate of kiwi fruit in EHD drying process Mohammad Jafar Dalvand , Seyed Saeid Mohtasebi, Shahin Rafiee * Department of Agricultural Machinery, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran; Corresponding Author: Dalvand@ut.ac.ir * Received 20 October 2012; revised 21 November 2012; accepted 3 December 2012 ABSTRACT logical properties of food [1]. Thermal drying degrades color, ?avor, texture, and nutrients [2]. Ratti [3] found that freeze drying produces dehydrated products of supe- rior quality but often has high energy costs. Energy losses in the product, dryer walls, vacuum pumps, and other dryer units should also be considered. Osmotic dry- ing of food at lower energy rates and temperatures with favorable quality is desirable but results in a long drying time. Microwave drying also generates high heat during drying, and microwave-vacuum drying is more energy efficient than microwave-convective drying [4]. During drying, the liquid component usually under- goes a phase change. In thermal drying, an energy equi- valent to the latent heat of vaporization must be supplied to create this change. Therefore, drying is a relatively energy intensive process. So reduction of energy usage in drying of biological materials is a major concern among environmentalists in terms of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [5,6]. In response to the disadvantages of conventional drying processes, there is now a growing interest in the use of non-thermal processing of food and similar materials. An example of this is electrohydrody- namic (EHD) drying, which is a relatively new, non-ther- mal drying technique [7]. Since corona discharge can be produced at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, the technique is particularly attractive for low-tempera- ture appl