36094

TEMPERATURE, GEOMETRY AND NaCl CONCENTRATION, INFLUENCE IN OSMOTIC DEHYDRATION TOMATO

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The tomato is one of the main agricultural products in Brazil. It is often consumed fresh, in sauces and concentrated. Dehydration is an alternative to add value and increase the use of the fruit, it has small shelf life of one to two weeks. Osmotic dehydration is considered a pre-drying treatement, it removes some of the free water in the material by osmosis activity. This paper aimed to evaluated the influence of temperature, geometry and solution concentration in the osmotic dehydration of tomato variety Debora Plus. The tomatoes were cut in three different geometries, two, four and six equal parts, immersed in H2O solution with a NaCl concentration of 5%, 10% and 15% at temperatures of 20°C, 25°C, 30°C, 35°C, 40°C and 50°C. It used the design of experiments (DOE) Taguchi method. In the ANOVA statical test, the solution temperature is considered significant at level of 15%, in 15min test at 50°C dehydrated tomato 4,37%, 0,7% to more than 20°C and 1,9% more to 25°C; after 30min 5,3%-50°C; after 60min 7,1%-50°C and after 120min 13,6%-30°C and 8,6%-25°C, showing that at 30°C has higher dewatering rate over 120min period and 50°C higher rate comparing to others temperatures until 60min period time. The 5% concentration dehydrated on average 0,6% higher than the 15% concentration. The geometry of the six-parts dehydrated 0,8% more than the geometry of two-parts and 0,4% to four-parts, because the more fractionated, the greater the contact area with the result of the solution, allowing greater activity. The optimal combination determined in this work was 30°C temperature, 1.5% NaCl concentration and six-parts fractionated tomato geometry.