Osmotic dehydration kinetics of apricot using sucrose solution

The aim of this work was to find the best sucrose concentration, temperature and solution to sample ratio for osmotic dehydration of apricot. Osmotic dehydration of apricot slices were carried out in three different sucrose concentrations and four different temperatures. Also three different weight ratios of solution to sample was conducted to one set of experiments. The experimental data were fitted to Peleg and Fick models. Water loss and solids’ gain increased with the increase of temperature and concentration. Effective diffusivities calculated using Fick’s model were in the range of 1.066 × 10−9–4.061 × 10−9 m2/s for water loss and 7.69 × 10−10–3.127 × 10−9 m2/s for solids’ gain. Increasing the volume of osmotic media caused an increase in overall mass transfer but the best weight ratio was determined to be 10:1. The dehydration rate was evaluated using Peleg’s model and selecting the half maximum rate as a limit, the most appropriate time was obtained 6 h.