food and bioproducts processing 8 9 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 472476

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Food and Bioproducts Processing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fbp

Drying and quality characteristics of tilapia sh llets dried

with hot air-microwave heating
Zhen-hua Duan a,b, , Li-na Jiang b , Ju-lan Wang a , Xiao-yang Yu b , Tao Wang b
a
b

Key Laboratory of Tropical Biological Resources of MOE, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
College of Food Science and Technology, Hainan University, No. 58, Renmin Road, Haikou 570228, China

a b s t r a c t
The aim of this work was to study the effect of hot air-microwave heating on the drying and quality characteristics
of fresh tilapia sh llets. Experimental drying curves were obtained at three microwave powers (200, 400 and 600 W)
after hot air drying at two air temperatures (40 and 50 C) and a constant air velocity of 1.5 m/s. Some quality indicators such as shrinkage, rehydration and recovery properties were investigated. Results showed that an increase in
microwave power resulted in a decrease in nal moisture content when drying for the same period of time. The higher
the hot air temperature, the higher the dehydration rate was. The shrinkage ratio and rehydration ratio increased as
the microwave power and air temperature increased. However, the recovery ratio decreased as the microwave power
and air temperature increased. Lower hot air temperature and microwave power are benecial to keep the quality of
tilapia llets.
2010 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Hot air-microwave drying; Tilapia; Shrinkage; Rehydration; Recovery

1.

Introduction

Tilapia is the common name now applied to three genera

and species of sh in the family Cichlidae: Oreochromis,
Sarotherodon, and Tilapia. Native to Africa and the Middle
East, these species have been distributed throughout the world
and have become the second most important food shes in the
world (Watanabe et al., 2002). Tilapias possess an impressive
range of attributes that make them ideal for aquaculture. They
grow rapidly, reproduce easily, adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions and accept articial feeds readily. They
have good-tasting esh with a mild avor, are widely accepted
as food sh, are used in many cuisines, and their consumption
is not restricted by religious observances.
Tilapia culture has expanded rapidly during the last decade
as a result of technological advances associated with the
intensication of culture practices. Global production was
inuenced by rapid expansion of tilapia culture in China, the
Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Egypt. China is now the
leading producer having increased production from 18,000
tonnes in 1984 to 1,210,000 tonnes in 2007, more than 45% of

the total world production (Li et al., 2009). However, the quantity of the tilapia used for processing is too small to meet the
requirement of increased production, and it is highly perishable product as it consists of up to 80% of water (Duan et al.,
2005a; Li et al., 2009). Therefore, to solve the problems of high
enzymatic and bacterial activity in fresh sh, the use of processing and preservation technology is necessary.
Drying of sh is important (Bellagha et al., 2002; Bala
and Mondol, 2001), because it preserves sh by inactivating
enzymes and removing the moisture necessary for bacterial
and mold growth (Duan et al., 2004). Drying processes can
be broadly classied as thermal drying, osmotic dehydration,
and mechanical dewatering. Many researchers and applications focus on air drying (Aktas et al., 2007; Desmorieux and
Decaen, 2005; Duan et al., 2004; Gogus and Maskan, 2006). But
air drying has drawbacks of both long drying time required
and poor quality (Chou and Chua, 2001). Microwave energy
is widely used in agricultural products processing because
it heats quickly, is energy efcient, safe and harmless, and
easy to control (Duan et al., 2003; Zhang and Datta, 2005).
Microwave drying technology has become one of emerging

Corresponding author at: College of Food Science and Technology, Hainan University, No. 58, Renmin Road, Haikou, China. Tel.: +86
898 66289662; fax: +86 898 66279215.
E-mail addresses: dzhwjl@hotmail.com, dzh65@126.com (Z.-h. Duan).
Received 15 November 2009; Received in revised form 9 October 2010; Accepted 9 November 2010
0960-3085/$ see front matter 2010 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fbp.2010.11.005

food and bioproducts processing 8 9 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 472476

areas in food drying (McLoughlin et al., 2003; Orsat et al., 2007),

especially hybrid drying technologies such as air-microwave
drying (Datta and Ni, 2002; Duan et al., 2005b). Microwave
heating of temperature sensitive materials offers a more
rapid method of moisture removal (McLoughlin et al., 2003).
Microwaves heat material simultaneously inside and outside,
and can produce high rates of evaporation. If heating is too
fast, fresh tilapia llets, which have high water content, may
be burst into pieces. However, few reports were focused on
investigating the air-microwave drying of tilapia llets. The
aim of this work was to study the effect of hot air-microwave
drying process on the drying and quality characteristics of
tilapia llets. Evaluation of quality characteristics was studied
by determining the changes of the shrinkage, rehydration and
recovery ratio. The results obtained may provide the important theory basis for developing the application technology of
hot air-microwave drying in tilapia processing.

2.

Materials and methods

2.1.

Sample preparation

2.4.

2.2.

Shrinkage ratio

The volume of the test sample was measured using an excluding method, and the clean sea sand was selected as lling
material (Shang et al., 2007). The mean particle diameter of
sand is about 0.6 mm. Five replicates were performed for each
sample and mean value was calculated. The shrinkage ratio
was calculated as:
Rs =

V0 Vt
V0

(1)

where Rs is the shrinkage ratio of the sample, V0 is the initial

volume of the sample before drying, Vt is the volume of the
sample during drying at time t.

Rrec =

(3)

2.5.

Moisture content

The moisture content of test sample was determined according to the vacuum oven method (AOAC, 2005). At regular time
intervals during the drying period, samples were taken out and
dried in a vacuum oven (Model ZKF030, Shanghai Experiment
Instrument Co. Ltd., China) until constant weight.

Drying procedure

The following procedure was chosen according the previous

results (Duan et al., 2005b, 2006). The fresh sh llets were
pre-dried using a digital constant temperature blast drying
oven (Model 101-2, Changzhou Huapuda Instrument Co. Ltd.,
China) for 4 h at 40 C, and 50 C with a constant air velocity of
1.5 m/s. The pre-dehydrated sh llets were immediately put
into a laboratory microwave drying oven (Model NJL07-3, Nanjing Microwave Equipment Co. Ltd., China) to continue to dry
for different times (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 min) at different microwave
powers (200, 400, 600 W). For every batch of dried sample,
the moisture content, shrinkage ratio, rehydration ratio and
recovery ratio were determined. At least three replicates were
performed for each batch of test samples and the results were
averaged.

2.7.

Statistical analysis

Analysis of variance was performed by the ANOVA procedures

(SPSS 10.0 for Windows). Differences among the mean values
of the various treatments were determined by the least signicant difference test, and the signicance was dened at
p < 0.05.

Results and discussion

Rehydration ratio

Dry test samples were weighed with an electronic balance

(Model BS124S, Sartorius Company, Germany). Dried samples
were then put into the 40 C of clean warm water to rehydrate
for 30 min (Shang et al., 2007), and they are moved from the
water for weighing. The temperature of the water was maintained to 40 0.5 C by temperature controller (Model 501,
Shanghai Experiment Instrument Factory, China). Three replicates were performed for each sample and mean value was
calculated. The rehydration ratio was calculated as:
Rreh =

m
mo

where Rrec is the recovery ratio of the sample, and mo is the

weight of the fresh sample before drying.

3.
2.3.

Recovery ratio

The recovery ratio was calculated using Eq. (3) (Duan et al.,
2006). Three replicates were performed for each sample and
mean value was calculated.

2.6.

Fresh tilapias (Oreochromis niloticus) were purchased from a

sh market in Haikou, China. They were quickly transported
to the laboratory in sealed polystyrene boxes containing ice.
Fish were cleaned, gutted, skinned and headed, then cut into
llets with the size of 30 mm 20 mm 3 mm. The sh llets
were rinsed by tap water, and then placed in single layer on a
stainless steel wire mesh for drying experiments.

473

m mt
mt

(2)

where Rreh is the rehydration ratio of the sample, m is the

weight of the sample after rehydration, mt is the weight of the
sample before rehydration.

3.1.
Effect of pre-drying on the drying curves of sh
llets during microwave drying
The drying curves of tilapia llets are shown in Figs. 1 and 2.
The moisture contents decreased with the increasing in
microwave power in the same conditions (air temperature,
air velocity and drying time) of pre-drying using hot air. The
decreased moisture content could be attributed to increased
evaporation of water both on the surface of and in the sh
llets due to increasing temperatures by microwave heating
(Duan et al., 2005b). However, the drying curves were different
signicantly under the different conditions of microwave powers. Effect of the microwave power on the moisture content of
pre-dehydrated sh llets was signicant (p < 0.05).
Comparing the curves between Figs. 1 and 2, the drying
rates in Fig. 2 can be seen to be greater than those of the curves
in Fig. 1. This is because the initial moisture contents are dif-

food and bioproducts processing 8 9 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 472476

1.6

90

1.4

80

1.2

shrinkage ratio (%)

moisture content (d.b)

474

1
0.8
0.6
200W
0.4

60
200W
50

400W
600W

40

400W

0.2

70

600W

30
0

0
0

time (min)
Fig. 1 The microwave drying curves of tilapia llets after
pre-drying at 40 C.

10

time (min)

10

Fig. 3 Effect of microwave drying on the shrinkage ratio of

tilapia llets after pre-drying at 40 C.

90

3.2.
Effect of pre-drying on the shrinkage ratio of sh
llets during microwave drying
Figs. 3 and 4 showed effects of temperature of pre-drying with
hot air on the shrinkage ratio of samples during microwave
drying period. First, as can be seen, shrinkage increased with

0.6
200W

0.5

moisture content (d.b)

400W
600W

0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0

10

time (min)
Fig. 2 The microwave drying curves of tilapia llets after
pre-drying at 50 C.

80

shrinkage ratio (%)

ferent for the two different air temperatures. The temperature

of pre-drying using hot air had evident impact on the moisture content of sh llets during the microwave drying period
(p < 0.05). It seemed to be concluded that the moisture content at the change-over between air drying and microwave
drying should be about 0.5 g H2 O/g. The higher hot air temperatures led to the higher drying rates of samples. Similar
results have been reported for drying of vegetables materials
(Mwithiga and Olwal, 2005). Therefore, both hot air temperature and microwave power are considered to be benecial to
improve the drying rate of sh llets.
The required drying time was less than 6 min for obtaining
the nal products of 12% of moisture content (wet basis) when
sh llets dried by microwave drying at 400 W after pre-dried
at 50 C for 4 h (Fig. 2). However, it at least required 19 h to dry
the fresh sh llet to nal products of the same moisture content with 50 C of hot air (Duan et al., 2006). Therefore, the hot
air-microwave drying may shorten greatly the required drying
time compared with the hot air drying of tilapia llets.

70
60
200W
50

400W
600W

40
30
0

10

time (min)
Fig. 4 Effect of microwave drying on the shrinkage ratio of
tilapia llets after pre-drying at 50 C.

the drying time. Shrinkage is highest during the rst 2 min

and then seems to be relatively constant. The shrinkage ratio
of samples dried at 200 W, 400 W and 600 W of microwave
power for 2 min after pre-drying at 40 C, were 54%, 62%
and 65%, respectively (Fig. 3). When microwave drying time
was constant, the shrinkage ratio increased slightly with the
microwave power increasing, but the inuence of microwave
power on the shrinkage ratio of pre-dried llets was not evident (p > 0.05). Second, the higher hot air temperature led to
the higher shrinkage ratio of sh llets (p < 0.05). The shrinkage
ratios of the sh llets pre-dried with hot air between 40 C and
50 C were 42% and 58%, respectively. In addition, the inuence of pre-drying at 40 C was more than that at 50 C on the
shrinkage ratio of samples during microwave drying period by
comparing the differences of Figs. 3 and 4.
This is because moisture content of samples pre-dried for
4 h at 40 C was higher than that at 50 C. Much more moisture was removed rapidly during microwave drying due to
the instantaneous heating of microwaves (Duan et al., 2005b),
which resulted in greater changes of shrinkage ratio under the
same drying condition. With the microwave drying continued,
the moisture content of samples decreased, the difference of
moisture content between two temperatures was reduced, so
the changes in shrinkage ratio decreased accordingly. Therefore, temperature of pre-drying before microwave drying was
the main factor affecting the shrinkage ratio of dried llets.

475

food and bioproducts processing 8 9 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 472476

120

70
200W

rehydration ratio (%)

100

60

400W
600W

50

recovery ratio (%)

80
60
40
20

40
30
200W
20

400W

10

0
0

10

600W

time (min)

10

time (min)
Fig. 5 Effect of microwave drying on the rehydration ratio
of tilapia llets after pre-drying at 40 C.

Fig. 7 Effect of microwave drying on the recovery ratio of

tilapia llets after pre-drying at 40 C.

3.3.
Effect of pre-drying on the rehydration ratio of
tilapia llets during microwave drying

60

100

rehydration ratio(%)

80

60
200W

40

400W
600W

20

0
0

10

time (min)
Fig. 6 Effect of microwave drying on the rehydration ratio
of tilapia llets after pre-drying at 50 C.

recovery ratio (%)

50

Normally rehydration curves are plotted for a dry sample

(a nal product) immersed in water for different lengths of
time (Giri and Prasad, 2007). However, the nal moisture content of a dry sample depends on the specic requirement of
product, such as semi-dried products. Therefore, the rehydration ratios of samples of varying moisture content were
compared, here. Inuences of pre-drying with different air
temperature (40 C, 50 C) on the rehydration ratio of samples
during microwave drying were showed in Figs. 5 and 6. As can
be seen from Fig. 5, the rehydration ratio increased with the
extension of microwave drying when the microwave power
was constant. The similar result can also be derived from Fig. 6.
On the other hand, the rehydration ratio increased with the
increase in microwave power when microwave drying time
was unchanged. As can be seen from Fig. 5, the rehydration
ratio of samples dried at 200 W, 400 W and 600 W of microwave
power for 4 min after pre-drying at 40 C, were 40%, 53% and
73%, respectively.
However, the increase in the rehydration ratios was signicantly different between values shown in Figs. 5 and 6
(p < 0.05). Different temperatures of pre-drying brought different changes of the rehydration ratio of sh llets during
microwave drying period. When the fresh tilapia llets were
dried through microwave drying after pre-dried at 50 C, the
increase values of the rehydration ratio at 50 C were much less
than those at 40 C, resulted from microwave power increased.

40
30
200W

20

400W
10

600W

0
0

10

time (min)
Fig. 8 Effect of microwave drying on the recovery ratio of
tilapia llets after pre-drying at 50 C.
As can be seen from Fig. 6, the rehydration ratio of samples
dried at 200 W, 400 W and 600 W of microwave power for 4 min
after pre-drying at 50 C, were 72%, 75% and 82%, respectively.
So, the effect of the microwave power on the rehydration ratio
was closely related to the temperature of pre-drying. The lower
the temperature of pre-drying, the more rapid the increase in
rehydration ratio.

3.4.
Effect of pre-drying on the recovery ratio of tilapia
llets during microwave drying
In general, recovery curves are plotted for a dry sample (a
nal product) immersed in water for different lengths of time.
However, the nal moisture content of a dry sample depends
on certain specic requirement of products. Therefore, the
recovery ratios of samples of varying moisture content were
compared. Figs. 7 and 8 showed the effect of different predrying temperature (40 C, 50 C) on the recovery ratio of
samples. The recovery ratio decreased slightly with the extension of microwave drying time when the microwave power
was constant, and the change trends were very at, which
showed that the microwave drying time was not the main
factor affecting the recovery ratio. On the other hand, the
recovery ratio reduced with the increase in microwave power
when microwave drying time was xed. As can be seen from
Fig. 7, the recovery ratio of samples dried at 200 W, 400 W
and 600 W for 8 min after pre-drying at 40 C were 52%, 45%
and 42%, respectively. The recovery ratio-drying time curve at

476

food and bioproducts processing 8 9 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 472476

200 W was higher than the other two curves; the latter two
were relatively closer. Therefore, decreasing the microwave
power resulted in increase in the recovery ratio. Comparing
Figs. 7 and 8, all the recovery ratios of sh llets pre-dried at
40 C were higher than those at 50 C when the microwave drying time and power was xed (p < 0.05). So, the temperature of
pre-drying was important factors affecting the recovery ratio.

4.

Conclusion

Hot air drying followed by microwave drying can decrease

remarkably drying time for drying fresh tilapia llets compared with hot air drying. The moisture content at the
change-over between air drying and microwave drying should
be about 0.5 g H2 O/g. Hot air-microwave drying technology can
be used for dehydration of fresh tilapia llets due to decrease
drying time and improve quality (rehydration ratio). Effects
of microwave power and hot air temperature on drying characteristic of sh llets during the hot air-microwave drying
were signicant. An increase in microwave power resulted
in a decrease in moisture content of llets; the difference is
obvious in starting point for the microwave drying regarding
moisture content due to the two different air temperatures.
The inuence of the hot air temperature on the shrinkage
ratio and the rehydration ratio was signicant. The shrinkage
ratio and the rehydration ratio increased with increase of air
temperature. In addition, the lower the temperature of predrying, the more rapid the increase in rehydration ratio. These
may have resulted from the difference in the initial moisture
content for the microwave drying due to the two different air
temperatures. However, the change of the recovery ratio was
contrary to those of the shrinkage and rehydration ratio, the
recovery ratio decreased with increase of microwave power
and air temperature.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the nancial support provided by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
30660145 and 31060218), the National Key Technologies R&D
Program (Grant No. 2007BAD76B06), and the Natural Science
Foundation of Hainan Province, China (Grant No. 309006) for
the research work.

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