Modeling of drying kinetic of pretreated sour cherry

The effects of pretreatment solution (dipping in boiling water, salty boiling water, ethil oleat) were studied on drying kinetic of sour cherry. The thin-layer drying of sour cherries were carried out at three air temperatures of 50, 60 and 70°C and airflow velocity of 1 m/s. The experimental data were fitted to several thin-layer drying models such as Newton, Henderson and Pabis, Page, Logarithmic, Approximate Diffusion, Two-term exponential, and Midilli et al.. Three statistical tools coefficient of determination (R2), reduced chi-square (x2) and root means square error (RMSE) were used to quantify the goodness of fit. According to the results, drying time of sour cherry samples dipped in salty boiling water solution was shorter than the pretreated samples and control treatments. Besids, The Midilli et al. and Logarithmic models were found to be most suitable in describing the drying characteristics of sour cherry respectively. The effective moisture diffusivity of sour cherries based on the analytical solution of Fick’s second law ranged from 2.07×10-11 to 2.33×10-10 m2/s. Using of pretreated solutions caused to decreasing activation energy in sour cherry drying process. Activation energy values varied from 23.74 to 83.05 kJ/mol.