Influence of Drying Temperature on Drying Characteristics and Moisture Diffusivity of Custard Apple Pulp

 

Narotam Soni, V. D. Mudgal, Ashok Kumar

​

​

Received 15 February 2023, Accepted 14 March 2023, Published on 24 July 2023

​

​

​

ABSTRACT

​

Custard apple is multi-nutritional fruit with uncountable benefits to human health as well as honoured with delicious test. The custard apple pulp scooped hygienically from the fruits was dried in a thin layer of 4 mm thickness, temperatures of 50, 55, 60 and 65°C and an air velocity of 2 m/s in a tray dryer. Dehydration characteristics were found in terms of moisture content, dry matter, moisture ratio, drying rate to determine moisture diffusivity and activation energy using standard  methodologies. The result data revealed that the custard apple pulp drying process was in falling rate period only. There was a maximum 22.22% decrease in drying time from 60 to 65°C temperature increase while drying rate was recorded to varied from 0.00052 to 0.0008 g water per g dry matter per sec for the selected temperature range. Variation of moisture diffusivity was recorded from 3.20 × 10-9 m2/s to 4.80 × 10-9 m2/s, and activation energy for complete drying experiment was noted as 29.436 kJ/mol. The above result show that as the drying temperature increased the effective moisture diffusivity also increased and linear relationship obtained between reciprocal of absolute temperature and logarithm of diffusivity.

​

Keywords   Drying characteristics, Custard apple, Kinetics, Diffusivity, Shelf life, Moisture content.