Cinética de secagem e caracterização físico-química da acerola (Malphigia emarginata) pelo método FOAM – MAT.

Abstract

This work was developed with the aim of studying the drying of acerola method by foam-mat at temperatures of 50, 60 and 70 ° C in an oven with forced air circulation. To represent the drying kinetics by the method foam-mat mathematical models and Pabis Henderson, Page (1949) and Midilli and Kucuk (2002) were employed. As a criterion for evaluating these we used the coefficient of determination and the mean square deviation. This paper also presented as objective the physico-chemical characterization of acerola powder dehydrated. We used an experimental design with three central points 2² to evaluate the influence of independent variables temperature and time on the beat responses: titratable acidity, vitamin C and Kinetic Constant. From the results obtained it was observed that increasing the temperature decreased drying time of the acerola. Among the models applied Midilli and Kucuk (2002) showed the highest values of coefficient of determination R ² and the lowest values of DQM (Mean Square Deviation) for the temperature range studied. Regarding the statistical analysis, found that for the response variables there was no significant statistical difference for the input variables: temperature and time of beating of the pulp. On the other hand, the physico-chemical characterization indicated that the drying of acerola by foam-mat method is feasible for the process of obtaining the fruit powder, dehydrated getting a quality product especially for parameters criteria titratable acidity and vitamin C.