Osmotic dehydration of jack fruit slices

Abstract

The present work was undertaken with the objective of studying the kinetics and the osmotic-dehydration modeling of slices of jack-fruit in a flat layout. The osmotic treatment was carried out at 43ºC, employing agitation, and using sucrose solutions at concentrations of 40° and 50° Brix. The study of the kinetics of osmotic dehydration showed that in the sucrose solution at 50° Brix, the value of the water-loss (WL) was higher after 28.5 hours of processing (68.5% wb to 40.2% wb) , slightly higher than that found for the sucrose solution at 40° Brix (68.5% wb to 43% wb). The opposite behavior was observed for the gain in solids (SG). Adjustment of the experimental data was done using the Page and Fick models. From the analysis of the Fick equation, it was found that the effective diffusivity coefficients were 0.5837 and 0.6677 mm2 min-1 for 40° and 50° Brix, respectively.