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Chemical Engineering and Processing 47 (2008) 914–919

Convective drying kinetics of strawberry

İbrahim Doymaz ∗
Department of Chemical Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, 34210 Esenler, Istanbul, Turkey
Received 15 May 2006; received in revised form 14 February 2007; accepted 14 February 2007
Available online 23 February 2007

Abstract
The drying kinetics of strawberry in a laboratory dryer was studied. The pre-treated with alkaline ethyl oleate solution and untreated strawberries
were dried at selected temperatures of 50, 55 and 65 ◦ C with a constant air velocity of 1.2 m/s. The drying rate curves showed that drying process
took place only in the falling rate period. Thin-layer drying models of Lewis, Henderson and Pabis, logarithmic, Page, Wang and Singh evaluated
based on coefficient of determination (R2 ), reduced chi-square (χ2 ) and root means error (RMSE). The logarithmic model was found to be a better
model for describing the characteristics of strawberry for both of the temperatures of 50 and 55 ◦ C. The values obtained from Wang and Singh
were found to be more reasonable for temperature of 65 ◦ C than the other models. The transport of water during drying was described by Fick’s
equation and effective diffusivity varied from 4.95 × 10−10 to 1.42 × 10−9 m2 /s.
© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Strawberry; Convective drying; Alkaline ethyl oleate; Effective diffusivity; Rehydration capacity

1. Introduction a cheap, easy, and popular method, its application is restricted

Strawberry is one of the world’s largest fruit crops. Accord-
ing to FAO data, production quantity of strawberry was about
3,491,324 Mt in 2004 in the world. Turkey produced about
155,000 Mt [1]. Strawberry is one of the most delicate and
highly perishable fruits, due to respiration, weight loss and
susceptibility to fungal contamination [2]. Therefore, it can
be preserved by freezing and drying processes such as freeze,
osmotic, microwave, and air drying [3–6]. Besides, it could
consume fresh or in many other forms such as juice, concentrate
jam, and jelly and dried rehydrated with yoghurt and bakery
products [7].
Drying is the most important process to preserve grains, crops
and foods of all varieties. The removal of moisture prevents
the growth and reproduction of microorganisms causing decay
and minimises many of the moisture-mediated deterioration
reactions. It brings about substantial reduction in weight and vol-
ume, minimising packing, storage and transportation costs and
enables storability of the product under ambient temperatures
[8]. Sun drying has long been used to dry fruits and vegeta-
bles in tropical and sub-tropical countries. While sun drying is
∗ Fax: +90 212 449 18 95.
E-mail address: doymaz@yildiz.edu.tr.
by the long drying time and the need for favourable weather.
In order to improve the quality of foods, traditional sun dry-
ing techniques should be replaced with the mechanical drying,
which produces a better and more consistent quality product,
taking less time and minimising crop losses [9].
Drying of fruits is one of the most time and energy consuming
processes in the food industry. To reduce the processing time,
hence accelerating the drying process, a number of obstacles
must be overcome [10]. The main problem in drying of fruits
such as grape, apricot, plum, cranberry and strawberry are cov-
ered naturally with a thin-layer of wax cuticle, which controls the
rate of moisture diffusion through the samples. To accelerate the
drying process, chemical treatments such as ethyl or methyl ester
emulsions or alkali solutions of sodium hydroxide and potassium
carbonate. The effects of pretreatment solution on some fruits
such as grapes, apricots, and plums are usually applied before
drying so as to remove this wax cuticle and increase their per-
meability to water [10–14]. However, there is no information on
the effects of pretreatment solution such as alkaline ethyl oleate
on drying of strawberry in the literature.
The objective of this study was to determine the drying and
rehydration characteristics of strawberry, to investigate the effect
of alkaline ethyl oleate solution on drying time, to evaluate sev-
eral thin-layer drying models available in the literature and to
calculate effective diffusivity.

0255-2701/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cep.2007.02.003
 İ. Doymaz / Chemical Engineering and Processing 47 (2008) 914–919 915

2. Materials and methods Table 1

Mathematical models applied to drying curves of strawberry
Fresh strawberry (Fragaria) were purchased from local Model names Mathematical expression References
supermarket in Istanbul (Turkey) and stored in a refrigerator Lewis MR = exp(−kt) [18,19]
at 4 ◦ C until used. The fruits were removed from the refrig- Henderson and Pabis MR = a exp(−kt) [20,21]
erator about 2 h before experimentation and were allowed to Logarithmic MR = a exp(−kt) + c [22,23]
attain room temperature. Generally, strawberries of uniform Page MR = exp(−ktn ) [9,24–26]
size (average berry radius, length and weight 2.43, 3.73 cm and Wang and Singh MR = 1 +at + bt2 [27]
10.11 g, respectively) were selected for the experiment. The ini- where a, b, c, n are drying constants in models and k is drying rate constant
tial moisture content was determined by oven drying method (min−1 ).
[15]. Ethyl oleate and potassium carbonate were obtained from
Merck (Darmstadt, Germany). calculated as following:
Wr
rehydration capacity = (1)
2.1. Experimental procedure Wd
where Wr is the weight after rehydration (kg) and Wd is the
The drying of strawberry was investigated in cabinet dryer
weight of dried material (kg).
that is described previously by Doymaz [14] and installed in
the Chemical Engineering Department of Yildiz Technical Uni-
versity, Istanbul, Turkey. The dryer consists of an adjustable 2.3. Data analysis
centrifugal fan, electrical heater, air filter, drying basket and pro-
portional temperature controller. The air velocity was measured The moisture ratio (MR) was calculated using the following
with Testo 440 vane probe anemometer (Lutron, Taiwan) with a equation:
precision of ±0.03 m/s. The samples were dried in a perforated M − Me
basket of 30 cm2 × 11 cm high. MR = (2)
M0 − M e
After strawberry was washed with tap water, whole shapes
were dipped in alkaline ethyl oleate solution (2% EO + 5% where M0 , M and Me are initial, after time (t) and equilibrium
K2 CO3 , coded AEEO) at room temperature (∼23 ◦ C). Dipping moisture contents, respectively. For the analysis it was assumed
time is 1 min. The untreated samples (NAT coded) as control that the equilibrium moisture content was equal to zero [17].
were just washed with tap water to take away dust and dirt prior Numerous mathematical models have been proposed to describe
to drying. the drying characteristics of agricultural products. Five models
The drying experiments of pre-treated and untreated straw- were used to fit the drying experimental data and are presented
berries were carried out at air temperatures of 50, 55 and 65 ◦ C in Table 1.
and 1.2 m/s air velocity. Besides, untreated some samples cut The non-linear regression analysis was performed using
into halves and then dried at 50 ◦ C. The dryer was run with- the statistica computer program and was based on the
out load for 30 min to stabilise the drying conditions. Then the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. The statistical validity of the
samples were uniformly spread on the basket as a single layer. models was evaluated and compared by means of the coeffi-
Each sample utilised in the experiment weighed about 150 g. The cient of determination (R2 ) the reduced chi-square (χ2 ) and root
initial moisture content of strawberry was about 93.2% ± 0.2 means square error (RMSE). The higher the values of the R2 ,
(w/w). The amount of water removed during the drying pro- and lowest values of the χ2 and RMSE, the better the goodness
cess was recorded at 30-min intervals by means of a digital of the fit [28]. These parameters can be calculated as following:
balance (Mettler, model BB3000), with an accuracy of ±0.1 g. N
(MRexp,i − MRpre,i )2
Drying continued until 20% ± 0.5 (w/w) moisture content was χ = i=1
2
(3)
N −z
reached. The product was cooled and packed in low density
polyethylene (LDPE) bags that were heat-sealed. The experi-  N 1/2
1
ments were replicated three times and the average of the moisture RMSE = (MRpre,i − MRexp,i )2
(4)
content at each value was used. The drying data from the drying N
i=1
tests were then expressed as moisture ratio (MR) versus drying
where MRexp,i is the experimental moisture ratio, MRpre,i the
time.
predicted moisture ratio, N the number of experimental data
points, and z is the number of parameters in model [17,29].
2.2. Rehydration capacity
3. Results and discussion
Five grams of the dried products were added to 200 ml
distilled water, in a 400 ml flask beaker at 25 ◦ C for 24 h. 3.1. Influence of pre-treatment solution on drying time
After rehydration, samples were taken out, residual water was
removed and adhering water was absorbed carefully with tis- Curves of moisture content versus drying time for
sue paper and then weighed [16]. The rehydration capacity was pre/untreated samples are shown in Fig. 1. Samples with dipped
916 İ. Doymaz / Chemical Engineering and Processing 47 (2008) 914–919
Fig. 1. Drying behaviours of pre-treated/untreated strawberries.
in ethyl oleate plus potassium carbonate solution prior to drying
were found to have a shorter drying time compared to untreated
samples. The drying time required to reduce the moisture from
initial moisture content of about 93.2% (w.b.) to desired mois-
ture in the final product, approximately 20% (w.b.) was 1110,
990 and 690 min for pre-treated samples, 1620, 1320 and 900
for untreated samples at drying air temperatures of 50, 55 and
65 ◦ C, respectively. These results demonstrated that drying times
of pre-treated samples was about 23.3–31.5% shorter than that
of untreated samples. Consequently, AEEO solution was more
effective solution in strawberry drying and removed the waxy
layer on the surface of berry and increased the skin permeability.
So, drying time of strawberry was decreased. A similar effect
of ethyl oleate has been found in drying of agricultural products
such as seedless grapes and apricots [11,14].
Fig. 2 is shown the variation of drying rate with moisture
content. A constant-rate period was not observed in any of the
experiments of this work, so the entire drying process for straw-
berry occurs in the range of the falling-rate period. Moisture
ratio decreases continuously with diminishing drying time. This
shows that diffusion in dominant physical mechanism governing
Fig. 2. Variation of drying rate with moisture content of strawberry samples at
different temperatures.
Fig. 3. Drying curves of halves and whole untreated strawberries.
moisture movement in the samples. The results were generally
in agreement with some literature studies on drying of various
fruits such as apricot and strawberry [14,28,30].
The drying rate increases with increasing the surface area
exposed to heated air, strawberries dry faster if they are halved
prior to drying process. The results of halves and whole dried
strawberries at 50 ◦ C demonstrated that in and had drying times
of 720 and 1620 min, respectively (Fig. 3). Drying time was
decreased by 125% for halved strawberries dried at 50 ◦ C com-
pared to the drying time of samples dried as whole at the same
temperature. Similar result was found by Sunjka and Raghavan
[10] for drying of cranberries. They reported that mechanical
pre-treatment such as cutting into halves of fruits provide sub-
stantial increase in moisture ratio loss, because the surface area
for mass transfer is greater.
3.2. Rehydration characteristics
The results for rehydration capacity are shown in Fig. 4.
Rehydration of pre-treated samples was much faster than
untreated samples. The pre-treatment yielded structurally a more
compact product after drying process. This factor adversely
Fig. 4. Rehydration ratio of pre-treated/untreated samples.
 İ. Doymaz / Chemical Engineering and Processing 47 (2008) 914–919 917

Table 2
Statistical results from various thin-layer drying models for untreated
strawberries
T (◦ C) Model names R2 χ2 RMSE

50 Lewis 0.9968 0.000235 0.000463

Henderson and Pabis 0.9970 0.000224 0.000432
Logarithmic 0.9995 0.000035 0.000067
Page 0.9980 0.000146 0.000281
Wang and Singh 0.9894 0.000799 0.001541
55 Lewis 0.9892 0.000916 0.001792
Henderson and Pabis 0.9931 0.000595 0.001138
Logarithmic 0.9996 0.000029 0.000054
Page 0.9987 0.000112 0.000214
Wang and Singh 0.9975 0.000214 0.000409
65 Lewis 0.9787 0.001991 0.003853
Henderson and Pabis 0.9856 0.000092 0.000173
Logarithmic 0.9990 0.000095 0.000173
Fig. 5. Comparison of the experimental and predicted moisture ratios by loga-
Page 0.9975 0.000240 0.000449
rithmic model for pre-treated/untreated strawberries.
Wang and Singh 0.9996 0.000036 0.000068

influenced the rehydration of pre-treated strawberry. The rehy-
dration tests show that the rehydration at 65 ◦ C is faster than
other temperatures.
3.3. Modelling of drying curves
and 55 ◦ C. The values obtained from Wang and Singh were found
to be more reasonable for temperature of 65 ◦ C than the other
models. Fig. 5 compares experimental data with those predicted
with the logarithmic model for dried strawberry at 50 and 55 ◦ C.
Fig. 6 compares experimental data with those predicted with the
Wang and Singh model for dried strawberry at 65 ◦ C.

The moisture content data at the different air temperatures 3.4. Effective diffusivity
were converted to moisture ratio expression (Eq. (1)) and then
curve fitting computations with the drying time were done by Fick’s second diffusion law has been widely used to describe
using the five thin-layer drying models in Table 1. The statis- the drying process during the falling rate period for biologi-
tical results from the models such as R2 , χ2 and RMSE values cal materials. General series solution of Fick’s second law in
are shown in Tables 2 and 3. In all cases, the R2 values for the spherical coordinates with the assumptions of constant moisture
models were greater than the acceptable R2 value of 0.90, indi- diffusivity and temperature, negligible shrinkage during drying
cating a good fit [31]. Generally R2 , χ2 and RMSE values were is given as follows [32]:
changed between 0.9758 and 0.9998, 0.000013 and 0.001991,
∞  2 2 
0.000024 and 0.003853, respectively. As expected, the logarith- M − Me 61 n π Deff t
mic model was found to be a better model for describing the = 2 exp − (5)
M0 − M e π n2 r2
characteristics of strawberry for both of the temperatures of 50 n=1

Table 3
Statistical results from various thin-layer drying models for pre-treated
strawberries
T (◦ C) Model names R2 χ2 RMSE

50 Lewis 0.9956 0.000274 0.000533

Henderson and Pabis 0.9966 0.000281 0.000533
Logarithmic 0.9998 0.000013 0.000024
Page 0.9998 0.000095 0.000180
Wang and Singh 0.9922 0.000642 0.001218
55 Lewis 0.9937 0.000529 0.001027
Henderson and Pabis 0.9955 0.000393 0.000741
Logarithmic 0.9991 0.000076 0.000138
Page 0.9989 0.000089 0.000169
Wang and Singh 0.9936 0.000556 0.001046
65 Lewis 0.9758 0.002418 0.004635
Henderson and Pabis 0.9831 0.001769 0.003243
Logarithmic 0.9971 0.000314 0.000550
Page 0.9978 0.000227 0.000416
Wang and Singh 0.9997 0.000028 0.000052 Fig. 6. Comparison of the experimental and predicted moisture ratios by Wang
and Singh model for pre-treated/untreated strawberries.
918 İ. Doymaz / Chemical Engineering and Processing 47 (2008) 914–919

Table 4 ing of strawberry increases the drying rate and consequently

Calculated effective moisture diffusivity at for pre-treated and untreated straw- decreases drying time. Also, rehydration of pre-treated samples
berry drying
was much faster than untreated samples. It was found that there
Code Air temperature, T (◦ C) Effective diffusivity, Deff (m2 /s) was no constant-rate period of drying in strawberry. Drying pro-
NAT 50 4.95 × 10−10 cess took place under the falling-rate period. The logarithmic
55 6.64 × 10−10 model was found to be a better model for describing the char-
65 1.09 × 10−9 acteristics of strawberry for both of the temperatures of 50 and
AEEO 50 6.42 × 10−10 55 ◦ C. The values obtained from Wang and Singh were found
55 8.90 × 10−10 to be more reasonable for temperature of 65 ◦ C than the other
65 1.42 × 10−9 models. The effective diffusivity varied from 4.95 × 10−10 to
1.42 × 10−9 m2 /s and increases as air temperature increases.

Appendix A. Nomenclature

a, b, c drying constants in models

Deff effective diffusivity (m2 /s)
k drying rate constant (min−1 )
M moisture content (kg water/kg dry matter)
Me equilibrium moisture content (kg water/kg dry matter)
M0 initial moisture content (kg water/kg dry matter)
n positive integer, drying constant in the models
Fig. 7. Variation of effective diffusivity with drying temperature. N number of experimental data points
r radius (m)
where Deff is the effective diffusivity (m2 /s), r is the radius of RMSE root mean square error
the sphere (m). For long drying times Eq. (5) can be simplified R2 coefficient of determination
to a straight-line equation in the form: t drying time (min)
     2  T air temperature (◦ C)
M − Me 6 π Deff t Wd weight of dried material (kg)
ln = ln − (6)
M0 − M e π2 r2 Wr weight after rehydration (kg)
z number of parameters in model
where (M − Me )/(M0 − Me ) is the moisture ratio (MR). The
effective diffusivity values were calculated by Eq. (6), using the
method of slopes. It is typically determined by plotting experi- Greek letter
mental drying data in terms of ln(MR) versus time [33]. From χ2 reduced chi-square
Eq. (6), a plot of ln(MR) versus time gives a straight line with a
slope of: References

π2 Deff [1] FAO, 2005, Statistical Database, Available: http://www.fao.org.

slope =
r2
The results of effective diffusivity of pre-treated and untreated
samples summarised in Table 4. The effective diffusivities
of pre-treated samples were higher than untreated samples
(Fig. 7). In addition, the values of Deff increased greatly with
increasing temperature. The effective diffusivities varied from
6.42 × 10−10 to 1.42 × 10−9 m2 /s for pre-treated samples and
from 4.95 × 10−10 to 1.09 × 10−9 m2 /s for untreated samples
over the temperature range 50–65 ◦ C. The values of Deff lay
within in general range of 10−11 to 10−9 m2 /s for food materi-
als [31]. Based on these results, the effective diffusivity in the
alkaline ethyl oleate solution treated strawberry samples was
increased at all the temperatures than untreated samples.
4. Conclusions
The results of this study indicate that using alkaline ethyl
oleate solution and increasing air temperature during the dry-
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