Dehghannya Jalal, Habibi-Ghods Mahdi
Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, 51666-16471, Iran.
Curr Res Food Sci. 2025 Feb 27;10:101013. doi: 10.1016/j.crfs.2025.101013. eCollection 2025.
Shrinkage consideration is pivotal in modeling heat and mass transfer during drying processes. This study investigated the interactive effects of microwave power and pulse ratio on various properties of potato slices during drying. The drying process was further modeled using moving boundary conditions to assess the influence of these variables on heat and moisture diffusion. Results demonstrated that increasing microwave power and decreasing the pulse ratio significantly reduced drying time due to intensified effective moisture diffusion coefficient (14.28%). Enhanced product quality-evidenced by minimized shrinkage (26.28%), reduced bulk density (13.22%), and improved rehydration ratio (28.96%)-alongside increased energy efficiency, was observed with higher power levels and pulse ratios. Additionally, a higher pulse ratio intensified the electric field due to shorter microwave "on" durations, promoting a more uniform wave distribution within the product. Unlike convective air drying, where moisture removal initiated from the food's edges, the combined microwave-air drying approach exhibited a distinct moisture migration pattern attributed to the volumetric heating mechanism of microwaves, which directed heat transfer from the interior to the surface of the potato slices. The model's performance, evaluated using R and RMSE metrics, was deemed satisfactory. Overall, this research highlights the importance of optimizing microwave power and pulse ratio for the efficient production of high-quality potato chips.
在干燥过程中的传热传质建模中，收缩考虑至关重要。本研究调查了微波功率和脉冲比在马铃薯片干燥过程中对其各种特性的交互作用。使用移动边界条件对干燥过程进行了进一步建模，以评估这些变量对热和水分扩散的影响。结果表明，由于有效水分扩散系数增强（14.28%），提高微波功率和降低脉冲比显著缩短了干燥时间。在较高功率水平和脉冲比下，观察到产品质量提高，表现为收缩最小化（26.28%）、堆积密度降低（13.22%）和复水率提高（28.96%），同时能源效率提高。此外，较高的脉冲比由于微波“开启”持续时间较短而增强了电场，促进了产品内部更均匀的波分布。与对流空气干燥不同，对流空气干燥中水分从食品边缘开始去除，而微波-空气联合干燥方法呈现出独特的水分迁移模式，这归因于微波的体积加热机制，该机制将热从马铃薯片内部传导至表面。使用R和RMSE指标评估的模型性能被认为是令人满意的。总体而言，本研究强调了优化微波功率和脉冲比以高效生产高质量薯片的重要性。
