Drying Kinetics of Banana Peel

Abstract

Drying of blanched banana peel was carried out in tray dryer. The drying experiments were performed at two different temperatures and a constant air velocity of 0.5 m/s. To select a best model, five different thin layer drying models were fitted to experimental data. Nonlinear regression procedure was used to fit five different models. The models were compared with experimental data of banana peel drying at air temperature of 60 °C and 70 °C. The best thin layer drying model was selected using the coefficient of determination (R 2), chi-square (ࣲ 2) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The highest value of R 2 (0.99640, 0.99652), the lowest of chi-square(ࣲ 2) (0.000218, 0.000231) and RMSE (0.014778, 0.015177) at temperature of 60 °C and 70 °C indicated that the Logarithmic and Henderson and Pabis model is the best mathematical model to describe the drying behaviour of banana peel. 1. Introduction Bananas (Musa sp.) are one of the most important tropical fruits consumed worldwide by people of all age groups. The nutritional and functional properties of bananas are known to provide good health. Nutritionally, bananas contain available carbohydrates which provide energy, vitamins B and C, and significant amounts of potassium and magnesium and amino acids. The peels of banana also contain carbohydrates, proteins, and fiber in significant amounts, making it an ideal substrate for production of value added products. Assuming that banana peels account for only 30% of the total fruit weight and have 20% dry matter, it contains minerals and various amino acids like aspartic acid, threonine, serine, glutamic acid, proline, glycine, alanine, cystine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, lysine and arginine. To the best of our knowledge no past research was conducted to investigate the drying kinetics of banana peel in hot air drying. In the view of the health promoting properties and high nutritional benefits of banana peel, the present study was carried out to observe the effect of different temperatures on drying characteristics of banana peel and to select the best mathematical model to observe the drying behavior of the banana peel.