Dehydration of potato

Abstract

Abstract In Part I of this paper (Islam & Flink, 1982), the drying behaviour of potato in a natural convection, solar dryer was discussed. A number of factors were shown to influence the ability to complete the drying process within 1 day. In the current paper, we report on another approach to increase solar dryer throughput. It is shown that osmotic concentration in a 45% sucrose/15% salt solution, prior to solar drying, results in a two- to five-fold increase in product throughput, due to moisture loss and solids uptake in the osmosis step and higher, allowable, final moisture contents for the finished product. Product organoleptic quality was judged to be good and ascorbic acid retention was similar to that reported for commercial dehydration processes.