Foam-Mat Drying Process of Duck Egg White

Abstract

The foam-mat dryingprocessof egg white, developed in the food industry, promotes a porous product, brittle and easy to grind. The powderedegg white has a good rehydration properties, safer consumption and storage conditions than fresh product, keeping the high level of proteins and vitamins contained in the egg. In this way, the objective of this work is to study, through numerical computational simulation, the physical aspects of the duck egg white foam-matdrying process. For this, the foam was characterized by its density, percentage of expansion, air over run, stability and moisture. Temperature (50, 60 and 70°C), stirring rate (levels 6, 7 and 8) and stirring time (4, 5 and 6 minutes) are taken as input conditions and the product final moisture and drying time are the output variables. Drying was performed based on the complete factorial 23 + 3 central point experimental design in this procedure. It has been observed that the time and stirring rate significantly influence the product final moisture and that the drying temperature is predominant for the total process time. From the foam moisturedata, adjustments of empirical mathematical models were made; evidencing that theModifiedPage and the Page models provided the best results, with a standard deviation lower than 0.01 and the coefficient of determination above 0.99. For this analysis, the case where the drying temperature, time and the stirring rate were, respectively, 70 °C, 6 minutes and 8 level, presented the best results.