• Corpus ID: 198950362

DETERMINATION OF THE DRYING VARIABLES FOR DEHYDRATION OF BANANA PULP SHEETS ( Musa paradisiaca L . )

@inproceedings{Cerquera2017DETERMINATIONOT,
  title={DETERMINATION OF THE DRYING VARIABLES FOR DEHYDRATION OF BANANA PULP SHEETS ( Musa paradisiaca L . )},
  author={N{\'e}stor Enrique Cerquera and Eduardo Pastrana and J. Castro},
  year={2017}
}

• N. E. Cerquera, E. Pastrana, J. Castro
• Published 2017

Bananas are, after coffee, Colombia's most important agricultural product. Post-harvest losses and the emergence of new markets for processed products; make it convenient to the introduction of technologies to its most efficient use. In this paper, banana pulp (Musa paradisiaca L.) is characterized and the drying variables are determined to obtain dried pulp sheet. To achieve this, equipment for testing static drying is designed and built, and banana pulp is characterized by determining: moisture content, soluble solids, pH and acidity. The drying curves, with forced air, for different air speeds (178.3 m.min-1, 206.1 m.min-1 and 234.1 m.min-1) and different temperatures (50°C, 55°C, 60°C and 65°C) are obtained, finding that an air velocity of 231.4 m.min-1 and a temperature of the drying air of 65°C, are the most suitable conditions for dehydrating banana pulps used under the experimental conditions. The behavior of the dried pulp sheet obtained, in relation to their conservation parameters, is satisfactory; microbiological counts are within acceptable ranges for dehydrated products which are favoured by the low water activity reached in the dried product.