Study of the effects of drying methods and various pretreatments on the rehydration kinetics of red chili pepper (capsicum annum)

The aim of this study was investigation of the effects of pretreatments (hot water blanching and chemical treatments) by hot air and sun drying methods on mass transfer kinetics during red chili pepper rehydration phenomenon. For these purposes Fick's second law and Peleg model were applied for modeling of red chili pepper rehydration phenomenon. The results revealed that, Peleg model could predict red chili pepper rehydration phenomenon with high precision (R2≥0.9320). Moisture diffusion coefficients of red chili pepper were reported in range of 1.217×10-8 m2/s to 5.540×10-8 m2/s. Also, the results showed that, hot water blanching was fairly increased rehydration compared to other pretreatments which maximum value of this parameter was observed at temperature of 55oC.