Effects of electrical pretreatment conditions on osmotic dehydration of apple slices: Experimental investigation and simulation

Electrical pretreatments at 9 different conditions consisting of the combination of 3 different voltage gradients (20, 27, and 32 V/cm) and 3 different application times (10, 20, and 30 s) were applied on apple slices. Apple slices were osmotically dehydrated in 50% sucrose solution at 40 degrees C until their total dry matter content (TDM) reached to 40%. The effect of pretreatment conditions on the change of water loss and solid gain during osmotic dehydration was investigated, and effective diffusion coefficients were determined. The time needed to reach up to 40% TDM content was predicted by using the numeric solution of unsteady state mass transfer equations and diffusion coefficients via MATLAB code written. The electrical pretreatments reduced the osmotic dehydration time by in the range of 26-64%. The final water and solid distributions of apple slices were simulated in ANSYS. Modeling and simulation results were in good agreement with experimental data (p < 0.05).