Abstract
Water imbibition theory has been shown to have a multidisciplinary validity. To demonstrate its applicability to the rehydration of dried porous food, kinetics of water uptake of freeze-dried (FD) carrots was studied. Water imbibition followed the general Lucas-Washburn equation. Utilizing different liquid media highlighted the need for model improvement overcoming several discrepancies mainly related to the utilization of a single "effective" cylindrical capillary and a constant contact angle. A significant swelling of the carrot samples was observed and quantified. The rate of lateral one-dimensional expansion of the samples was modeled assuming two first-order independent kinetic processes. These results indicated that dry foods could be treated as a composite "porous media", for which pertinent processes and variables should be taken into consideration.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 37-43 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2005 |
Keywords
- Kinetics modeling
- Lucas-Washburn equation
- Rehydration
- Swelling