KINETICS of OSMOTIC DEHYDRATION of COCONUT

Abstract
Osmotic dehydration rates were determined for coconut over a range of osmotic solution concentration (40–70°B) and temperature (25–45C). A semi‐empirical relation for kinetics of osmotic dehydration has been proposed, which indicates the moisture diffusion as a function of concentration of osmotic solution and its temperature. Good agreement was observed between the observed and predicted values (correlation coefficient 0.90). the effective diffusion coefficients of water in coconut during osmotic dehydration were estimated and also the activation energy of the osmotic dehydration process of coconut was found as 1.75 × 104 J/kg‐mole.