Response Surface Analysis on the Microwave Vacuum Drying Characteristics and Process Parameters of Fresh Jujube Slices

Authors

  • Yu Ding, Jianqiang Wang, Xingwen Che, Chuanfeng Li

Abstract

While the drying of fresh jujube slices promotes the deep development of jujube products, vacuum drying is beneficial to improving drying quality and optimizing drying process. At the present stage, efforts are still needed to further study thickness, chromatic aberration, rehydration ratio, crispness, and other process parameters of fresh jujube slices in the drying process. This paper describes an experiment on processing of fresh jujube slices using microwave vacuum drying technique and discusses the influence of microwave intensity, relative pressure and slice thickness on water content and drying rate. It also describes the exploration of the relationship between microwave intensity, relative pressure and slice thickness and chromatic aberration, rehydration ratio and crispness through response surface analysis by establishing the mathematical quadratic regression equation. Finally, it demonstrates the determination of the optimal combination of process parameters for the microwave vacuum drying of fresh jujube slices. The results showed that the drying process consisted of three phases: accelerated drying phase; constant-rate drying phase; and decelerated drying phase. The second phase was, however, not obvious. Under the optimal process parameters (microwave intensity=4W/g, relative pressure=52.27kPa, and slice thickness=2.15mm), the chromatic aberration value was 2.2, the rehydration ratio was 3.1, and the crispness value was 4.2N.

Published

2020-04-30

Issue

Section

Articles