Novel drying cum floral water extraction technique for rose petals

Abstract

This study focussed on experimental investigation of a novel drying cum floral water extraction technique for rose petals (Rosa rubiginosa). The proposed novel technique extracted floral water from rose petals while it was drying only thus giving both dried petals and floral waters which has not been done before. Air flow rate and temperature were found to be the most influencing parameters in the drying cum floral water extraction process. Using a multi-criteria decision-making technique, the best alternative for maximum drying and condenser efficiency with lower energy consumption was found to be 2.5 m/s air flow rate and target temperature of 55 °C. The quality of rose water extracted was found to be chemically similar to the commercial one. The dried petals obtained had a vibrant color and retained the characteristic aroma of fresh rose petals. The texture obtained was dry and crisp. The moisture content of the dry rose petals was typically lower than 20%w.b. All these properties indicated that the obtained dried petals and floral waters were suitable to be used in culinary, cosmetic, and herbal preparations and solved the problem faced by current methods of petals being useless after floral water extraction. Further enhancement in the setup for large-scale implementation will require numerical simulation to obtain optimized parameters for the higher capacity setup that is to be developed.