Effect of drying temperatures and pre-treatments on drying characteristics, energy consumption, and quality of bell pepper

Abstract

Abstract: The effect of air temperature (50°C, 60°C, 70°C, 80°C and 90°C) and pre-treatments (steam, water palm oil-water, groundnut oil-water blanching) on the drying characteristics and quality of bell pepper was investigated.  The results were fitted to six thin-layer drying models and Parabolic model gave the best fit.  The pretreated samples dried faster than untreated samples and had lower values of total energy needed and specific energy requirement.  The ascorbic acid content, color and rehydration index varied from 129.1 to 316.8 mg/100 g dry matter, 0.1 to 0.9, 22 to 33 mL and pretreated dried pepper generally had higher values than untreated samples.

Keywords: modeling, energy consumption, Rehydration index, color, pepper