, Kamlesh Paswan 2
, Kapil Kumar Gupta 3
, Mohd. Ateeque 4
, Supriya Raj 5
, Manoj Kumar Gaur 6
2Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Galgotias University, Greater Noida 201009, India
3Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sershah Engineering College, Sasaram, Rohtas, Bihar 821113, India
4Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sershah Engineering College, Sasaram, Rohtas, Bihar 821113, India
5Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Noida Institute of Engineering Technology, Greater Noida 201009, India
6Department of Mechanical Engineering, Madhav Institute of Technology & Science, Gwalior 474005, India
Abstract
This study focuses on perfecting greenhouse solar drying conditions for banana slices using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Experiments were conducted across a temperature range of 40-60 °C and a drying period of 20-40 hours, employing a Central Composite Design to investigate their effects on three critical quality parameters: moisture content, color change (ΔE), and vitamin C retention. The developed quadratic
regression models showed excellent prediction power with R² values from 95.2% to 97.8%. The moisture content was found to be in the range of 12.50% to 16.83%, color change 22.0 to 35.8 and vitamin C content 3.25 to 8.85 mg/100 g. Optimal drying conditions were determined to be 52.15 °C for 31.66 hours, which yielded balanced product quality with moisture content of 14.45%, color change of 29.55 and vitamin
C content of 5.41 mg/100 g. The results presented here show that the optimized solar drying process is capable of high-quality production of dehydrated banana slices with retention of the nutritional contents and efficient energy use. Designed to be compatible with commercial scale drying equipment, the developed predictive models can help to lower the post-harvest losses and ease food processing in rural and industrial
settings in a more sustainable manner.
