Abstract
The present study examined the effect of ultrasonic pretreatment at three time the levels of 10, 20 and 30 min on some thermodynamic (effective moisture diffusivity coefficient(Deff), drying time, specific energy consumption (SEC), energy efficiency, drying efficiency, and thermal efficiency) and physical (color and shrinkage) properties of kiwifruit under hybrid hot air-infrared(HAI) dryer at different temperatures (50, 60 and 70 °C) and different thicknesses (4, 6 and 8 mm). A total of 11 mathematical models were applied to represent the moisture ratio (MR) during the drying of kiwifruit. The fitting of MR mathematical models to experimental data demonstrated that the logistic model can satisfactorily describe the MR curve of dried kiwifruit with a correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.9997, root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.0177 and chi-square (χ2) of 0.0007. The observed Deff of dried samples ranged from 3.09 × 10−10 to 2.26 × 10−9 m2/s. The lowest SEC, color changes and shrinkage were obtained as 36.57 kWh/kg, 13.29 and 25.25%, respectively. The highest drying efficiency, energy efficiency, and thermal efficiency were determined as 11.09%, 7.69% and 10.58%, respectively. The results revealed that increasing the temperature and ultrasonic pretreatment time and decreasing the sample thickness led to a significant increase (p < 0.05) in drying efficiency, thermal efficiency, and energy efficiency, while drying time, SEC and shrinkage significantly decreased (p < 0.05)