Mathematical Modeling on Drying of Tamarind Fruits

Tamarind is an indigenous tree in India and every parts of the tree such as root, stem, fruit and leaves are widely used in nutritional, medicinal and industrial applications. The stickiness of tamarind fruit is a major concern during the deseeding process, and it can be reduced by drying. The tamarind growers and processing industries are still using the sun drying method, which is time-consuming and unhygienic that produces a poor-quality product. In this context, a cabinet type tray dryer was used to reduce the moisture content from dehulled and de-fibered tamarind fruit. Drying study of tamarind was conducted at three different temperatures (50, 60 and 70°C) with different airflow rates (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 m/s). Different drying models were adopted for analyzing the drying kinetics of dehulled tamarind fruit under different temperature conditions. The highest coefficient of determination of 0.9998 and reduced Chi square value of 0.00012 was favoring the optimized drying condition based on Wang and Singh model. The optimized temperature and airflow rate were found to be 60°C and 1.0 m/s, respectively. For the optimized drying conditions, the corresponding quality parameters viz., L^*, a^* and b^* values, total soluble solids, titratable acidity and pH were found to be 44.30 ± 1.16, 3.50 ± 0.11 and 13.2 ± 0.15, 25.60 ± 1.00 ^obrix, 17.40 ± 0.58% and 3.1 ± 0.08, respectively.