Hygroscopic and thermodynamic features of dehydrated coriander

Abstract

The determination of adsorption isotherms of moisture is an essential factor in the projects and studies of systems for drying, processing, storage, packaging and shelf-time prediction of food products. The adsorption isotherms are obtained by means of variation of moisture content in terms of equilibrium water activity at a constant temperature, and its prediction is performed by the application of mathematical models to experimental data. Through the adsorption isotherms it can be calculated some thermodynamic properties such as isosteric heat of adsorption, which is used in the analysis, development of case study of food and moisture-solid interactions. Thus, this work aimed to study the behavior of adsorption isotherms of leaves and stems of dehydrate coriander, evaluate the model that represents the behavior of the curves and determine the isosteric heat of adsorption. The experimental data were fitted by nonlinear regression, the GAB, Oswin, Smith, BET, Halsey and Peleg models had been used. The models which best represented the behavior of the adsorption curves of the leaf and stem were from Smith and Peleg. The isosteric heat of adsorption obtained from dried leaf is larger than the stem.