A Review of Factors and Pre-Treatments Affecting Mass Transfer Rate of Food during Osmotic Process

Abstract

This paper reviews the effect factors and pre-treatments on mass transfer rate in food during osmoticprocess. Osmotic process is the most popular process as a pre-processing impregnation and dehydrationstep. The quality of each final product depends on mass transfer in the food and it needs own suitableprocess condition. Clearly understanding the main factors affecting the mass transfer in food is important.Therefore, the factors including type of solution, solution concentration, temperature, structure/composition of the materials, sample size and geometry, solution to solid volume ratio, level of agitationare explained. Also, various pre-treatments to increase the rate of mass transfer, such as blanching, applicationof ultrasound, high pressure, vacuum, high intensity electrical field pulses are presented.

Keywords : Osmotic Process / Mass Transfer Rate / Factors / Blanching / Ultrasound / Pressur