Avaliação da influência da temperatura na cinética de secagem de Malus domestica em estufa.

Abstract

The drying process is a technique used in the conservation ofproducts aimed at maintaining itsquality,thus increasing itsuseful life. Thus, the mathematical modeling has been usedand arousing the interestof countless researchers for the mostdiverse products. In this sense, the objective was to analyze at differenttemperatures the drying kinetics of Apple (Malusdomestica), packaged in a greenhouse for a period of 10hours. The temperatures used were 40 ° C, 50 º C and 60 º C,from which moisture parameterswere analyzed, which wereadjusted to Newton, Page, Henderson and Pabis andlogarithmic models bythe coeficient of determination (R ²)and reduced Chisquare (χ ²). The experiment was carriedout in triplicate in order to minimize the marg in of error,using apples cut in slices with 0.76 cm of medium thicknessand average diameter of 5.2 cm.The proposed models adjusted well to the experimentaldata, but the logarithmic model presented a better result forpresenting higher value of R ² and lower value of χ ²,indicatingthat this model satisfactorily represents thephenomenon of drying apple in Greenhouse, for theconditions studied. The drying of Apple made in greenhouse showed goodreproduction of the experimental data, being possible toidentify that the application of higher temperatures, for thesame processing time, can generate a greater reduction inthe moisture content of the samples. For temperatures of 50and 60 ° C, the inal moisture was approximately 4%, valuebelow the maximum limit required by ANVISA for storage ofdry or dehydrated plant products.