Microwave drying characteristics of squash slices

Recently, customers' demand and attention to dried agricultural products or foods have increased due to their convenience and nutritional values. Conventional drying methods such as solar drying and hot air drying have been most widely used for producing a large amount of dried agricultural products; however, those methods require quite a long time and high energy consumption. To compensate for these issues associated with conventional methods, dielectric heating such as microwave and radio frequency heating has been used as a supplemental method in the drying procedure. This study investigated the microwave drying characteristics of squash slices with different thicknesses under different microwave power intensities and determined the best drying model that could precisely describe the experimental drying curves of the squash slices. The squash was cut into slices with two different thicknesses (5 and 10 mm), and then, they were dried under different microwave power intensity ranges between 90 and 900 W with an increase interval of 90 W. Six drying models were tested to evaluate the fit to the experimental drying data, and the effective moisture diffusivity ($D_{eff}$) values of the squash slices under microwave drying were determined. The results clearly show that as the microwave power was increased, the drying time of both squash slices was significantly decreased, and the slope of the drying rate increased. The effective moisture diffusivity was also significantly related with the microwave power intensities and thicknesses of the slices. In addition, the Page model was most suitable to delineate the drying curves of both squash slices under different microwave power intensities.