Oven air drying of banana slices
The moisture content of the fresh ripe bananas
for both the untreated and treated samples was found to be
in the range of 75-77% (w b) which reduced to 16.8 to
27% after oven drying for various thicknesses and
temperatures of air drying for 16 hours. Figure-1 shows
the drying rates of different thicknesses of untreated
Banana slices at different drying air temperatures. It can
be observed from the Figure that as the time of drying
increases the moisture content of the samples decreases.
Also, it took nearly 15 hours of drying to reduce the
moisture content of the control banana slices of 5 mm
thickness at 60°C drying air temperature from 75 to 20%.
As the temperature was increased to 70°C for the same
thickness of slices, it took nearly 13 hours to reduce to the
same moisture. Besides, the 60, 5 mm thick slices dried
almost at the same rate as the 70°C, 7 mm thick banana
slices. At about 9 hours of drying time, the rate of
moisture removal from the 60°C, 5 mm thick slices was
equal to 70°C, 7 mm thick banana slic