Analysis of drying potato kinetics in laboratory conditions
Institute of Food Technology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Agriculture, Belgrade-Zemun (1,2)
Chemistry is in its nature a fundamental science, but nowadays its results are increasingly used in practice. In such a way, many syntheses of important nutrition and industrial compounds (chemical technology), or destruction of harmful substances (chemical ecology) have been developed. The analytic part of chemistry (analytical chemistry) has found a significant usage even in optimization of technological processes of food technology. One of the oldest ways of food preservation is drying (dehydration). The basis of this process of preservation is to vaporize water, to dry enough the product, in order to stop the activity of enzymes and possibility of microorganisms’ development. Water in agricultural products is not free but bound to dry matter. Therefore, for its vaporizing it is necessary to bring enough heat. The part of the brought heat is used for vaporizing water, but one part of it becomes the energy for activation of several chemical reactions that decrease the nutritive values and the quality of future food. Therefore, the important engineering problem emerges: determination of optimal conditions for drying. For optimization of technological process of drying, it is necessary to do mathematical modeling of dependence of water vaporizing speed from environmental conditions beforehand. The aim of this paper is to determine potato pieces drying kinetics in laboratory dryer, in order to determine the optimal conditions for its industrial dehydration. It was established that in the first quarter of the time of drying evaporated 28.3% of total evaporation of water, and then in order by quarters: 53%, 14.1% and 4.6%, respectively. The greatest speed of drying was realized at moisture of potatoes about 50%.