Enhancement of Convective Banana Drying: Effect of Ethanol Pretreatment on Drying Characteristics, Color Properties, Shrinkage Ratio and Comparison of Artificial Neural Network and Thin Layer Modeling

Abstract

The effect of ethanol pretreatment on the drying characteristics, color properties, shrinkage ratio and comparison of thin layer and artificial neural network (ANN) were investigated in the current study. Ethanol pretreatment increased drying rate and reduced drying time. In addition to this, ethanol concentration and pretreatment time had positive contribution to drying rate. According to the statistical parameters, ANN modeling showed better performance in the prediction of moisture ratio of the banana samples in comparison to thin layer modeling. On the other hand, color properties were negatively affected by drying and ethanol pretreatments. L* and b* values decreased whereas a* values of the banana samples showed increment tendency. Also, total color difference (∆E) was found to be higher than 5 value, indicating that non-trained observer notices the color change. Besides, it is obviously that ethanol pretreatment affected shrinkage ratio of the banana samples. Especially, diameter shrinkage ratio increased with the increment of ethanol concentration and pretreatment time.