Vacuum dehydration kinetics of onion slices

Abstract

Onion slices were dried in a single layer of thickness varying from 1 to 5 mm in the temperature range of 50–70 °C in a laboratory scale vacuum dryer. The effect of pretreatment, drying temperature and slice thickness on the drying kinetics of onion slices was studied. Four thin layer drying models namely Lewis model, logarithmic model, Page model and Fick's law model were applied on the experimental moisture loss data with respect to time to predict the drying pattern properly on the basis of coefficient of determination and standard error. The Page model showed better fit to the experimental data compared to other models. Effective moisture diffusivity of the slice was measured using Fick's second law of unsteady state diffusion. The diffusivity values were found ranging from 1.32E−10 to 1.09E−09 m 2/s for untreated and 1.32E−10 to 1.09E−01 m 2/s for treated onion slices. Effective moisture diffusivity showed increasing trend with increase in temperature and thickness.