Need of project:

Drying is the oldest method for preservation of fruits and vegetables in the agriculture and food
processing industry. Different methods of drying are used like sun, hot air, freeze, vacuum and
microwave- combined hot air or microwave-combined vacuum drying. Every method has its own
advantages and disadvantages in terms of final product quality, drying efficiency and power
consumption. Drying or dehydration of the food product is required to carry out under low
temperatures to avoid thermal degradation of organoleptic properties of the product specifically in
fruit juices. Fruit juices with high sugar content are very sensitive to processing to high temperature
and long time to remove water because of changes in color, flavor, and damage to cloud properties.
An effective drying method can also minimize the need for the use of preservatives in processed
food, which cause detrimental health issues when ingested or used in large quantities. Drying
method is selected according to the product physiochemical properties and economic
considerations. The aim of drying is mainly to reduce moisture content of food product to a certain
level so that microbial spoilage and undesirable deteriorative enzymatic reactions are significantly
minimized. Drying not only preserve quality of the food product but also add benefits in reduction
of package and transportation prices in terms of volume and weight. Sun drying is a cheap method
but avoided due to uncontrolled temperature and long drying duration leading to quality losses.
Hot air drying method has been the most common method for drying of food products from
decades and in practice still now. However, this method has the drawbacks of poor quality of dried
product, low power efficiency and long duration of drying. . Drying not only preserve quality of
the food product but also add benefits in reduction of package and transportation prices in terms
of volume and weight . Drying not only preserve quality of the food product but also add benefits
in reduction of package and transportation prices in terms of volume and weight It has been
reported by the previous study on Hot-air drying method that long time exposure of food material
to high drying temperatures results in a serious loss of such quality attributes as color, flavor,
nutrients and texture (Bourat et al.,1994; Maskan, 2000). Also heat transferred into inner cavities
of the food material is limited in the falling rate drying period due to less access to inner bound
water and low thermal conductivity of the food material resulting in burning of outer portion while
remaining inner proportion less dried . To overcome these problems associated with quality issues
and slow drying rates in hot-air drying and to achieve fast and efficient thermal drying , use of
microwaves has found more effective. Microwaves (MW) or dielectric heating has the advantages
that they can easily penetrate into the solid material and absorbed preferentially by the dipole
molecules such as water molecules in the food product(Drouzas and Schubert, 1996).Microwaves
have been used for the purpose of heating since 1940s(Mermelstein, 1997). The microwave drying
method used for drying herbs (Giese, 1992), potatoes (Bouraout et al.,1994), raisins
(Kostaropoulos and Saravacos, 1995), apples and mushrooms (Funebo and Ohlsson, 1998; Giri
and Prasad, 2007), carrots (Litvin and Miltz, 1998)and bananas (Maskan, 2000).Microwaves
penetrates into the interior cavities of the food product and heat is reached to all sections of the
product. Increasing power of microwaves resulted in in increase of water removal rate for carrot
(Ozbek and Dadali, 2007). Higher drying rates are achieved by boiling of interior water and escape
of vapors to outer surfaces developing higher pressure gradients between water molecules at inner
and outer layers of the food material. Loss of nutrients and degradation of biological compounds
is also negligible.Morever,rehydration rate of the dried product was also observed to increase with
increase in microwave power during second stage of drying. However, non- uniformity of
electromagnetic field cause hot spots to be produced inside the microwave drying chamber. During
last stage of microwave drying, drying rate also decreases due to hindrance caused by bound water
and temperature still goes on increasing rapidly to certain levels due to continuous supply of heat
by microwaves resulting sometimes in scorching. Burning of strawberries has found to occur when
power of 600W was applied (Venkatachalapathy and Raghavan, 2000). Sometimes slight
crispiness of the final product is also desirable along with drying, which cannot be achieved by the
use of simple microwave drying. Rapid mass transfer in microwave drying sometimes cause
physical damage to the texture of the dried product. Morever, microwave drying might result in a
poor quality of the product when application of microwaves is handled improperly . In freeze
drying of food material some aromatic compounds may be lost with evacuation of the aggressive
gases because aromatic compounds are comparatively volatile and dehydration time can be upto
20hours.Freeze drying is also highly expensive method in terms of investment capital and
maintenance cost.To overcome these limitations in previously described drying methods, we use
microwaves in combination with vacuum drying also called microwave-vacuum drying.
Microwave–vacuum drying is a potential alternative method for obtaining dried foodstuffs with
high quality,including fruits, vegetables and granulated products.( Drouzas et al.,1999). The
microwave-vacuum method is used in food industries, for example: tea powder, concentrated fruit
juices and enzymes (Schiffmann,1995). Researchers have applied microwave vacuum drying
method (MVD) to the drying of tomatoes(Bondaruk et al., 2007). ,potatoes Durance and Wang,
2002,bananas canberries Figie,and garlic Clary et al., 2005). and obtained better quality of the
dried products(Bondaruk et al., 2007; Durance and Wang, 2002;Maskan, 2000; Clary et al.,
2005).Microwave vacuum drying works on the principle of volumetric dielectric heating in which
heat generation inside the food material is caused by absorption of microwave energy by dipolar
molecule like water.Absorption of electromagnetic or microwave energy and heat generation
depends upon selective dielectric properties of food materials to absorb microwaves.Each food
material has its own dielectric properties which should be investigated before applying microwave
power.It is also found that dielectric properties decreases as decrease in moisture content of the
food product during microwave vacuum drying. Microwave-vaccume drying combines the
benefits of both microwave and vaccume drying. Microwaves vaporize interior water by high
volumetric heating and vacuum speeds up moisture diffusion by rapid evaporation at lower
temperatures and pressures than at atmospheric conditions (Petrucci and Clary 1989). Since,
microwave- vacuum drying dries the product under reduced pressures resulting into puffed texture
of dried product like frying and snack foods.
Heat sensitive products can also be successfully dried at lower temperatures without degradation
of bioactive components (Tang, 2002). Less exposure to air and absence of oxygen during drying
may reduce oxidation of fats and vitamins, and flavor, color and nutritional properties of products
can be successfully preserved. Microwave vacuum drying results in 20-30% higher heating rates
than freeze drying. Drying time was reduced up to 70-90% by microwave- vacuum drying as
compared to conventional hot-air drying in the drying of mushroom and better rehydration capacity
was observed (Giri and Prasad, 2007). Color improvement is an other benefit in microwave-
vacuum drying due to decresing pressure. Microwave -vacuum drying overcome defects of inner
shrinkage and burning of interior caused by excessive heating in microwave drying. . Microwave-
vacuum drying at 24 kPa resulted in
best overall quality index of dried potato
cubes in shortest timeframe, and was recommended as the most appropriate technique for drying
potato.Because of low levels of oxygen levels and low tempreatures,probiotics can servive at high
levels of activity.
The aim of my study is to design microwave-vaccume oven to dry fruit slices and vegetables at
different levels of microwave power density and pressure levels to get high quality of dried product
along with high nutritional value.
(Yongsawatdigul and Gunasekaran,
1996).