Abstract:
For years, sun and hot air drying have been considered as traditional drying methods.
Today, using microwave is one the newest methods of drying. Iran is one of the main
producers of pomegranate fruit in the worl
d. To manufacture better product, drying
needs to be handled in controlled and optimized process, therefore investigation of
process condition kinetic is an obligation. In this study, thin layer drying behavior of
pomegranate arils using microwave drier at
4 power levels (180, 360, 540 and 720W),
oven drier at 4 temperature levels (45, 55, 65 and 75°C) and sun drying was studied. Page,
Henderson and Pabis, Midilli
et al
., Newton, Logarithmic and Two
-
Term models were
compared according to their Root Mean Squ
are error (RMSE), Chi
-
square (χ
2
), Mean
Bias Error (MBE) and correlation coefficient (R
2
). The results of the studied models
indicated that Midilli
et
al
., model exhibited the best fit to the data obtained for oven,
microwave and sun drying. Increasing the
oven drier temperature and the microwave
drier power lead to an increase in the drying rate. Dried samples at 75 ̊C exhibited the
highest
R
2
= 0.9998, and the least
RMSE
and
χ
2
, 0.2059 and 0.5576 respectively in
comparison with other samples. While dried sa
mples by microwave, 720W, showed the
highest
R
2
= 0.9998 and the least
RMSE
and
χ
2
were 0.1894 and 0.4203, respectively in
comparison with other samples. Sun dried samples had the highest
R
2
in Midilli Model,
the least
RMSE
and
X
2
were 0.0338 and 0.7059 res
pectively.
Keywords:
Drying modeling, Microwave drier, Oven drier, Pomegranate arils, Sun drying.
