Modeling of drying and ameliorative effects of relative humidity (RH) against b-carotene degradation and color of carrot (Daucus carota var.) slices

2019

English

Drying and b-carotenes retention kinetics werepredicted using models in relative humidity (RH) dryingcondition. This was achieved by drying carrot slices usingRH-convective hot-air dryer at 60, 70 and 80 C under RH(10% 20% and 30%) conditions at 2.0 m/s air velocity.Three mathematical models describing thin layer werecompared to their goodness of fit in terms of coefficient ofcorrelation (R2), root mean square error (RMSE) andreduced Chi square (v2). The Wang and Singh model couldsatisfactorily describe RH-convective drying of carrot slices with R2, RMSE and v2 in the ranges of 0.996–0.999,5.4 9 10-4–9.4 9 10-4 and 0.0150–0.03353 respectively.The results reveal that a range of 3.61–8.2% retention of bcarotene was observed for every 10% increase in RH invarious drying air temperature. In summary, higher temperatures were mainly responsible for b-carotenes degradation however this can be mitigated when drying isconducted under higher RH.

Sarpong, F.; Zhou, C.; Bai, J.; Amenorfe, L. P.; Golly, M. K.; Ma, H.