Abstract
The hot air drying characteristics of celery root were evaluated in a laboratory scale dryer at the drying temperatures of 50, 60, 70 and 80℃. The effect of hot air drying on drying time, drying rate, moisture content, moisture ratio and effective moisture diffusivity of celery root was investigated. Fifteen thin layer drying models were fitted by using experimental drying data. The fitting effect of model predictions was evaluated by using the values of coefficient of determination, sum squared error, root mean square error and chi-square. The results showed fitting accuracy of model 15 (Hii et al., 2009) gave a better fit for all drying conditions applied. The average values of effective moisture diffusivities of celery root ranged from 1.957×10^(-9) to 9.016×10^(-9) within the given drying temperature range. With in a certain temperature range (50-70℃), the average effective moisture diffusivities of celery root increased with increased temperature. The activation energy was estimated as 21.817 KJ/mol using an exponential expression based on the Arrhenius equation.
Highlights
Celery (Apium graveoolens L.) which belongs to umbrelliferae plant is an annual or biennial herb
The celery root was assumed as a slab because the thickness of sample was much less than its diameter
The effective moisture diffusivity was calculated by the following equation: Analysis of hot air drying characteristics of celery root: To investigate the effect of hot air drying temperature on moisture content, four hot air drying temperatures, 50, 60, 70 and 80°C were tested for drying 25.305±0.500 g of celery root with average thickness of 0.356 cm
Summary
Celery (Apium graveoolens L.) which belongs to umbrelliferae plant is an annual or biennial herb. It is native to Mediterranean coastal marshes and has been widely cultivated in the world. Celery is rich in a variety of vitamins, inorganic salts, calcium, phosphorus, iron and essential oils with different limonenes and terpenes such as p-cimol, a-limonen, asantalol and b-pinen (Engindeniz, 2008). The aromatic meat of its callous celeriac and aromatic leaf are the eatable parts of celery. It has the function of clean blood and lower blood pressure as well as blood lipid and is used as stimulants, antispasmodics, aphrodisiacs and so on (Kapoor and Bhatnagar, 2007)
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