Kinetic Study of Drying and Oil Intake During Deep-Fat Vacuum Frying of Blanched Snake Fruit Slices

Abstract

In this work, an experimental study of deep-fat vacuum frying of pre-treated original fruit from South-East Asian, i.e., snake fruit, is conducted. Then the kinetics of drying and oil intake under vacuum frying conditions are investigated by using constant effective diffusivity of water and logistic oil content models.  Its comparison to those on atmospheric condition based on the thermal-driven concept is also discussed. It is demonstrated that the constant effective water diffusion and logistic oil content models are fitted very well with the experimental data. The effective diffusivity increases with the increase of oil temperature under vacuum condition and its values are smaller than those under atmospheric frying. On the other hand, the specific rate of oil content (k) has no specific trend. Moreover, the specific rates of oil content for atmospheric conditions are larger than those corresponding values for vacuum conditions.

Keywords: Deep-fat, vacuum frying, oil temperature, drying rate, oil absorption, snake fruit chips