Investigation of microwave application in agricultural production drying

Drying is one of the conventional methods in order tomaintain the food in which due to lower product moisture content, itminimizes the rate of reactions and undesired microbial activity andincreases the storage time by maintaining the appearance of products.In the present research, In order to evaluate drying of apple slices,undergoing microwave method, one microwave drier was designedand manufactured. In the manufactured drier, one circuit wasemployed for feeding Magnetron lamp with nominal power of 1.3 kWand frequency of 2.45 GHz in order to produce microwaves. This drieris capable of controlling microwaves power and during dryingprocess, changes in mass and total consumption power can besimultaneously measured. The research results showed that increasingmicrowaves power causes the drying time to considerably reduce anddrying rate to increases. minimum drying time occurs in the highestmicrowave power But after reviewing the images on the productquality testing, it is determined that the quality of products can beimpaired in high microwave power.

کلیدواژه ها:

Drying ، microwave power ، drying time ، drying rate ، apple