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

摘要

Drying and β-carotenes retention kinetics were predicted using models in relative humidity (RH) drying condition. This was achieved by drying carrot slices using RH-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 were compared to their goodness of fit in terms of coefficient of correlation (R²), root mean square error (RMSE) and reduced Chi square (χ2). The Wang and Singh model could satisfactorily describe RH-convective drying of carrot slices with R², RMSE and χ2 in the ranges of 0.996–0.999, 5.4 × 10⁻⁴–9.4 × 10⁻⁴ and 0.0150–0.03353 respectively. The results reveal that a range of 3.61–8.2% retention of β-carotene was observed for every 10% increase in RH in various drying air temperature. In summary, higher temperatures were mainly responsible for β-carotenes degradation however this can be mitigated when drying is conducted under higher RH.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10068-018-0457-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.