Study of the hot air drying process of chicken breast by non-invasive techniques

[EN] Food drying is one of the main unit operations for food preservation and it is based on the difference of chemical potential between the product and a fluid with lower chemical potential. The objective of this work was the development of a thermodynamic model of chicken meat drying process using infrared thermography; also the viability of using dielectric spectroscopy as a monitoring system was analyzed. A thermodynamic model has been developed to predict the expansion/contraction phenomena of poultry meat throughout the drying process. Moreover, it was demonstrated that permittivity is a non-destructive method to monitor the evolution of drying process. The authors acknowledge the financial support from: the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Programa Estatal de I+D+i orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad AGL2016-80643-R, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER). Juan Ángel Tomás Egea wants to thank the FPI Predoctoral Program of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia for its support Tomás Egea, JÁ.; Castro Giráldez, M.; Colom Palero, RJ.; Fito Suñer, PJ. (2018). Study of the hot air drying process of chicken breast by non-invasive techniques. En IDS 2018. 21st International Drying Symposium Proceedings. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 481-488. https://doi.org/10.4995/IDS2018.2018.7733