Convective Drying of Food: Foundation, Modeling and Applications

This chapter focuses in a theoretical and experimental study of food dehydration with particular reference to drying of fruits and vegetables. Topics related to fundamentals, theory and effect of drying and modeling are presented and discussed. Application has been done to drying of banana fruit. Whole bananas were peeled manually and dried in an oven at temperatures ranging from 40 to 70 °C. Drying, heating and shrinkage lumped models were proposed and fitted to experimental data. Non-linear regression analyses were done to verify the consistence of the models to predict the experimental data. Results revealed which air temperature affect significantly moisture removal, heating and dimensions variations rates and quality of banana fruit. The fitted models presented good concordance with experimental data.