Study on water sorption isotherm of summer onion

Abstract

The water sorption characteristics of dehydrated onion and onion solutes composite by vacuum drying (VD) and air drying (AD) were developed at room temperature using vacuum desiccators containing saturated salt solutions at various relative humidity levels (11-93%). From moisture sorption isotherm data, the monolayer moisture content was estimated by Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer (GAB) equation using data up to a water activity of 0.52 and 0.93 respectively. Results showed that in case of non treated samples the monolayer moisture content values (Wo) of BET gave slightly higher values than GAB (9.7 vs 8.2) for VD, while GAB gave higher value than BET (11.0 vs 9.8) for AD. It is also seen that the treated and non treated onion slice and onion powder absorbed approximately the same amount of water at water activities below about 0.44 and above 0.44 the treated samples begin to absorb more water than the non treated samples. It was observed that 10-20% added of sugar gave no change in water sorption capacity while the amount of sorbed water increases with increasing amount added salt for mix onion product.Bangladesh J. Agril. Res. 40(1): 35-51, March 2015