Secagem de abacaxi (ananas comosus L.) por radiação infravermelha

Abstract

Brazil is one of the world's largest producers of pineapples. However, due to the high perishability of the fruit, a great part of this production is lost in the postharvest due to the seasonality of the production, difficulties of storage, transportation and also the distance of the consumer markets. To reduce these losses, it is necessary to use operations that optimize the process, such as drying operations, which aims to reduce the moisture and water activity of the products to prolong their useful life. The objective of this work was to analyze the drying of the pineapple by infrared radiation and, through the application of the principles of the technique of factorial planning of experiments, to estimate the effects of temperature and thickness on the characteristics of the obtained product. The experiments were carried out using variations in temperature (97, 105 and 113 ° C), and thickness (2, 4 and 6 mm), evaluating their influence on moisture, drying kinetics, color and water activity of dry pineapples. The results showed that pineapples presented relatively low water activity, around 0.43. The humidity was influenced by the thickness, showing that the lower the thickness, the less time would reach equilibrium moisture. The luminosity of the dry pineapple was high, with a reduction in the values of parameter a*, showing a tendency to be more greenish and an increase of parameter b* of the color analysis, showing a tendency to be more yellow. In addition, increases in temperature resulted in a reduction in drying time and in moisture of the final product, lower thickness values associated with high temperatures reach the moisture equilibrium state more rapidly.