Effect of ethanol dipping pretreatment on drying characteristics and quality of eggplant slices

Abstract: Because the eggplant is widely planted all over the country, but the moisture content of fresh eggplant is high and the shelf life is short, so harvested eggplants should be dried and dehydrated in time. How to achieve high-quality dried products is one of the important directions in drying research. Chemical impregnation process is a novel pretreatment technology, and ethanol is chosen as a chemical, which has many advantages, such as fast penetration, easy to evaporate, no chemical residues and harmless to human body, and has been applied to the pretreatment of fruit and vegetable. In order to improve the drying quality of eggplant slices and shorten the drying time, the eggplant slices were dipped in ethanol before hot air drying. The effects of different drying temperature (45, 55 and 65℃), ethanol concentration (0, 5% and 15%) in pretreatment and slice thickness (1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 cm) on drying rate, color, rehydration ratio and microscopic structure were investigated through the orthogonal experiments in this paper. Results showed that drying temperature, ethanol concentration in pretreatment and sample thickness had significant (P<0.05) effects on the drying processing. In addition, the sample thickness was most significant, followed by drying temperature and ethanol concentration in pretreatment. The drying time decreased with the increase of temperature, increased with the increase of slice thickness of the eggplant, and decreased first and then increased with the increase of alcohol concentration in pretreatment. The whole drying process was a kind of falling-rate drying. According to Fick's Second Law, the water effective diffusion coefficient was determined, which ranged from 2.74×10-9 to 7.75×10-9 m2/s. The sample thickness had greater impact (P<0.05) on the rehydration ratio compared with the drying temperature and ethanol concentration, and the rehydration ratio decreased as the sample thickness increased. The ethanol concentration in pretreatment had important influence (P<0.05) on color parameters of dried eggplant slices, but the effects of eggplant thickness and drying temperature on the color and lustre were not significant, which were far less than that of ethanol concentration in pretreatment on the color and lustre. And the pretreatment with ethanol also could change the microstructure and appearance quality of the dried samples. After eggplant was dipped in ethanol with low concentration, its moisture would be faster evaporated and the internal free water would be sent out in the drying process, and the drying rate was improved. And after eggplant was impregnated with high-concentration ethanol, ethanol made eggplant's internal nutrient composition change, which resulted in its structure more compact, and prevented moisture migration in the process of drying. Taking account of the drying rate and quality attributes, drying at 55℃, with ethanol concentration of 15% and sample thickness of 1.5 cm were recommended as the most favorable conditions for eggplant slice drying. In this drying condition, drying time, rehydration ratio and lightness was 225 min, 4.93 and 88.24, respectively. The present findings indicate that ethanol dipping pretreatment can not only enhance drying rate but also improve color attributes of dried products. The results provide a theoretical reference for the rapid drying of high-quality eggplant slices.