INFRARED DRYING KINETICS OF COATED PEACH SLICES WITH BASIL SEED AND XANTHAN GUMS

The objective of the current work was aimed to estimate the influence of novel edible coatings based on basil seed and xanthan gums, and infrared (IR) radiation power on the drying efficiency of coated peach slices were investigated in an IR dryer system. Moisture ratio data of IR drying of peach slices were fitted to 7 various empirical thin-layer equations. It was found that Page model has the best fit to show the kinetic behavior and acceptably described the IR drying behavior of coated peach slices with the lowest mean square error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and standard error (SE) values and the highest correlation coefficient (r) value. The values of MSE, RMSE, and MAE for all experiments were in the ranges of 0.00017-0.00047, 0.013-0.022, and 0.011-0.018, respectively. The average drying time of uncoated peach slices, coated by xanthan gum and coated by basil seed gum were 52.78, 60.00, and 76.22 min, respectively. The average effective moisture diffusivity (Deff) of uncoated and coated peach slices with basil seed and xanthan gums increased from 2.18×10-9 m2/s to 4.56×10-9 m2/s with increasing IR lamp power from 150 W to 375 W.