Design of Continuous Flow Osmotic Dehydration and its Performance on Mass Transfer Exchange During Osmotic Dehydration of Broccoli Stalk Slices

Abstract

A continuous flow solution unit was designed and built with a sole purpose of achieving better hydrodynamic control during the osmotic dehydration pre-treatment process. The initial study was set up to calibrate the flow meter at different sucrose solutions at different concentrations and temperatures to obtain a flow velocity range between 1.5 to 3.5 mm/s. In this study, broccoli stalk slices were used to investigate the effect of the flow velocity on mass transfer kinetics and compared with static condition. Further, the optimization of this equipment system was performed to achieve higher water loss with minimal solute gain as pre-drying condition. Comparative studies between static and dynamic conditions show that flow velocity helps in faster rate of water removal with lower solute gain during the osmotic dehydration process of broccoli stalk slices. The optimum condition was found to be at a temperature of 30 °C with concentration of 54 °Brix for 120 min of immersion time at flow velocity of 3.5 mm/s.