DRYING CHARACTERISTICS OF SEVERAL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT: EFFECT OF DRYING TEMPERATURE

摘要

Demand for food food, particluarly from gricultural resources has been ever increasing in proportion to the growth of human population. Hence, food preservation for extended usage through drying is gaining importance every day. This study reports the drying behavior of several agricultural products, namely sweet potato, carrot, ginger, turmeric, passion fruit and its rind via oven drying. Drying experiments were conducted for these agricultural products in a convective oven by varying the temperatures at 60°C, 70°C, 80°C, 90°C and 105°C. The samples were cubical with an approximate dimension of 0.5 cm × 0.5 cm × 0.5 cm which were prepared using commercial food chopper. From the experiments, it was found that with higher drying temperatures, less time is required to dry the samples. All the products exhibit falling-rate curves with no constant rate drying region. As for the drying rate, at initial stages the drying rate was very high before slowly decaying due to the constant moisture removal from the products studied.