Optimization of foam production in foam mat drying of celery juice and evaluation of its powder properties

Celery is one of the most consumed and highly nutritious vegetables with high dietary fiber, phytochemicals, vitamins, and minerals, which offers great benefits for utilization as a functional food ingredient. Fruit and vegetable juice powders have many benefits and economic advantages over their liquid precursors such as reduced volume/weight, reduced packaging, easier handling/ transportation, and much longer shelf-life. Also, powders can be reconstituted to produce juice and used for preparation of products such as snacks, chutney, soups, baby foods, etc. In‏ foam-mat drying, food liquids and pastes are first whipped into stable foam by the addition of different foaming agents or stabilizing agents and then dried in the form of thin layer. This foam structure dries rapidly due to the increase of the surface area of the material by incorporating air/gas and forms a porous structure which gives high quality and instant properties of the dried product.‏ The dried product is scraped off from the drying surface in the form of flakes, which is then converted to a fine powder. Response surface methodology (RSM) is a combination of mathematical and statistical techniques used to investigate the interaction effects of independent variables on responses. There is considerable information on foam-mat dried food powders, but there is no scientific literature related to foam-mat drying of celery juice. The present research was thus focused on optimizing the foaming conditions (WPC as a foaming agent, Xanthan gum (XG) concentration as the stabilizer and whipping time (WT)) to minimize foam density (FD) and drainage volume (DV) using RSM. The effects of drying temperatures on some physicochemical properties of powder were also investigated.  

Celery was purchased from the‏ local market.XG and WPC powders were‏ purchased from Sigma Chemical Company (St. Louis, MO)‏ and Milei Company Germany, respectively. Celery juice was extracted by using a juicer machine (Robert Bosch Stand mixer MMB 2000 /05 FD 8611 Type CNSM03EV, 600W, Slovenia). Based on preliminary tests, XG solutions were prepared by dissolving the appropriate amount of the defined gum powder in distilled water and stirring with a magnetic stirrer to achieve a uniform solution. This solution was refrigerated at 4°C overnight to complete hydration. RSM was used to estimate the main effects of the process variables on FD and DV in celery juice foam. The experiment was established based on a face-centred central composite design (FCCD). According to the experimental design, to prepare 100 g of samples, the appropriate amount of celery juice, WPC, and XG solution were poured to a 250 mL beaker. Then the mixture was placed into a water bath for 5 minutes at 55 °C temperature. The mixture was then taken out of water bath and was whipped by a mixer (Gosonic, model No. GHM- 818, 250W, China) with the maximum speed of 5400 rpm at ambient temperature during the given time. The density of foamed celery juice was determined in terms of mass over volume and expressed in g/cm3. To assess foam stability, the drainage test was performed for 1h. Furthermore, the effects of drying temperatures on some physicochemical properties of powders were investigated.  

The quadratic model was selected as a suitable statistical model for both FD and DV. ANOVA showed that this model is significant for both responses. Moreover, lack-of-fit was not significant for response surface models at a 95% confidence level, indicating that this model is adequately accurate for predicting responses. Based on the constrain criteria, the optimized foaming parameters were: XG concentration of 0.42% (w/w), WPC concentration of 6% (w/w), and WT of 9.30 min. The amount of FD and FDV for foam at these optimum conditions were 0.4 g/cm3 and 0 ml, respectively. The results showed the moisture content and water activity of the celery powders decreased with the‏ increase in drying temperature. By increasing drying temperature from 40 to 70 °C, bulk density also decreased. Increase in drying temperature results in decrease in moisture content and bulk density. Tapped density generally behaves similar to bulk density because by shaking powder, the space between the particles is filled and occupied volume by the powder is reduced. By increasing in temperature, particle density decreased. Overall, with increasing drying temperature, the porosity of powder increased. Increasing temperature and reducing moisture content, the possibility of approaching and join together of particles is increased and the space between the particles becomes less. The numerical value of the car index parameter in this study was 15.3% to 24.67%. The highest value of flowability related to the sample was dried at 70°c. With decreasing in drying temperature, the moisture content of powders increased and due to forming liquid bridges between particles making them less flowable. The numerical value of the Hausner parameter in this study was 1.15 to 1.32. Except for powder produced at 70 °C, the powder was placed in the intermediate cohesiveness powder class. By increasing drying temperature, the cohesiveness of powder decreased significantly.