Effect of temperature distribution on predicting quality of microwave dehydrated food

Free to read at publisher During food drying, many other changes occur simultaneously, resulting in an improved overall quality. Among the quality attributes, the structure and its corresponding color influence directly or indirectly other properties of food. In addition, these quality attributes are affected by process conditions, material components and the raw structure of the foodstuff. In this work, the temperature distribution within food materials during microwave drying has been taken into consideration to observe its role in color modification. In order to determine the temperature distribution of microwave-dried food (apple), a thermal imaging camera has been used. The image acquired from the digital camera has been analysed using image J software in order to get the color change of fresh and dried apple. The results show that temperature distribution plays an important role in determining the quality of the food. The thermal imaging camera was deployed to observe the temperature distribution within food materials during drying. It is clearly observed from the higher value of (ERGB =102) and the uneven color change that uneven temperature distribution can influence customer perceptions of the quality of dried food. Simulation of a mathematical model of temperature distribution during microwave drying can make it possible to predict the colour and texture of the microwaved food.

[1]  R M Reeve,et al.  RELATIONSHIPS OF HISTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE TO TEXTURE OF FRESH AND PROCESSED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. , 1970, Journal of texture studies.

[2]  Conrad O. Perera,et al.  Selected Quality Attributes of Dried Foods , 2005 .

[3]  Shahin Rafiee,et al.  Kinetic Models for Colour Changes in Kiwifruit Slices During Hot Air Drying , 2008 .

[4]  Kshitij Gupta,et al.  Damping studies in fiber-reinforced composites : a review , 1999 .

[5]  J. A. Esfahani,et al.  Mathematical simulation of convective drying: Spatially distributed temperature and moisture in carrot slab , 2012 .

[6]  M. Hawlader,et al.  Mathematical modelling and experimental investigation of tropical fruits drying , 2005 .

[7]  Guohua Chen,et al.  Numerical Investigation on Dielectric Material Assisted Microwave Freeze-Drying of Aqueous Mannitol Solution , 2003 .

[8]  Siaw Kiang Chou,et al.  New hybrid drying technologies for heat sensitive foodstuffs , 2001 .

[9]  Marcus Nagle,et al.  Combination of digital images and laser light to predict moisture content and color of bell pepper simultaneously during drying , 2012 .

[10]  A. Datta,et al.  Heat Transfer During Microwave Combination Heating: Computational Modeling and MRI Experiments , 2010 .

[11]  Ashim K. Datta,et al.  Modeling Transport in Porous Media With Phase Change: Applications to Food Processing , 2011 .

[12]  Azharul Karim,et al.  Modeling heat and mass transfer process during convectiondrying of fruit , 2012 .

[13]  Yankun Peng,et al.  Improving apple fruit firmness predictions by effective correction of multispectral scattering images , 2006 .

[14]  M. Minekus,et al.  From food structure to texture , 2000 .

[15]  Eddie Schrevens,et al.  Evaluating and Modelling the Size Classification of Apples , 1999 .

[16]  Valérie Orsat,et al.  Microwave-Assisted Drying of Biomaterials , 2007 .

[17]  José Miguel Aguilera,et al.  Microstructural principles of food processing and engineering , 1999 .

[18]  M. Rahman.  Food Stability Beyond Water Activity and Glass Transtion: Macro-Micro Region Concept in the State Diagram , 2009 .

[19]  Medeni Maskan,et al.  Effect of concentration and drying processes on color change of grape juice and leather (pestil) , 2002 .