Moisture loss kinetics modeling during deep-fat frying of potato strips pretreated with ultrasound and osmotic dehydration

Deep-fatfryingisone of theprocessing methods of potato which is chosen to produce a favorable flavor, taste, color and texture in processed foodstuffs. The aim of this study was to investigate moisture loss kinetics in fried potato strips and modeling moisture transfer in the samples by applying ultrasound pretreatment at two frequencies of 20 and 40 kHz as well as osmotic dehydration pretreatment using 2 and 4% salt solution concentration. Inthisstudy, theFick’s law was used as one of the moisturetransfermodels and the obtained effective moisture diffusion coefficientvalueswere between 1.945×10-8 and 7.178×10-8 m2/s,with an averagecorrelation coefficient of0.948. Both the pretreatmentsusedeffectivelyincreasedthe effective moisturediffusion coefficientduringfrying of potato strips. In addition to the Fick’s model, 6 empiricalmodelswere also usedto modelmoisturetransfer. Also, use of theArrheniusequationto determine theinfluence of temperature ontheeffectivemoisture diffusion coefficient showed thatrising temperatureleads toan increase inthe coefficient during thefryingprocess.