Osmotic dehydration of West Indian cherry (Malpighia emarginata D.C) – Mass transfer kinetics

Abstract

The objective of the present work was to study the mass transfer kinetics in the osmotic dehydration of the West Indian cherry. The dehydration conditions included the use of blanching and a hypertonic solution of 60% sucrose (w/w), determined previously. The fruit/solution ratio was 1/3. The experiments were done at room temperature. The mass transfer kinetics of water loss, salt gain and weight loss were obtained. The effective diffusivity was determined by using Fick’s second law applied to a spherical geometry with two considerations: with and without shrinkage. It was observed that the consideration of shrinkage resulted in best agreement of effective diffusivity with respect to experimental data of moisture content.