Investigation and Analysis of Drying Kinetics of Carrot Layers with Microwave Oven

Microwaves are one of the fastest methods of drying food whose energy is comparable to that of hot air drying.In this paper, the kinetics of drying film-thin carrot layers was investigated and analyzed. First, the carrots were cut into 2.5 mm and 5 mm thicknesses and then the experiments were carried out using Samsung M945 Microwave. Microwave power and shape of the carrot layers affected the drying time and effective moisture penetration to the extend that the drying time was reduced by 57.5%. The moisture penetration for the samples with 2.5 and 5 mm thickness changed from 1.35 ´ 10-7 to 3.6 ´ 10-7 m2 /s and 5.37 ´ 10-7 to 1.06 ´ 10-6, respectively.