Experimental investigation of effective factors of pulsed electric field in osmotic dehydration of apple

摘要

The effects of various factors of the pulsed electric field (PEF) as an apple osmotic dehydration (OD) preprocess by using response surface methodology (RSM) are investigated and optimized in this paper. Electric field strength, pulse numbers and pulse duration were considered as PEF pretreatment effective factors in constant osmotic dehydration conditions such as concentration and temperature. After 4h of osmosis, the results indicate decrease in amounts of water loss (WL) and solid gain (SG) by increasing field strength from 1 to 2kV/cm and decreasing pulse duration from 0.5 to 0.02s, respectively. The effect of increasing the pulse numbers from 8 to 16 give rise to the increase in amounts of water loss and solid gain at first and then by increasing to 24 pulses, the decrease in these amount has been evident. The ratio of water loss to solid gain (WL/SG) and response surface methodology (RSM) were used for optimization effects of PEF factors on the OD process. In optimal values of electric field strength, pulse numbers and pulse duration, the WL/SG ratio provided highest reduction sample mass.