Effect of air temperature on drying kinetics of broiler chicken wings and quality of end product

The present study investigated the influence of air temperature on the drying kinetics of broiler chicken wings and quality of end product during convective dehydration at 60, 70, 80, 90and 100℃.The results showed that the drying occurred throughout under falling rate of drying period and the predominant mechanism of mass transfer in the sample was that of internal mass transfer. The change of moisture content and drying rate had significant change at different hot air temperatures ( p < 0.05) . The effective moisture diffusivity increased with the increase of air temperature, and the valve of D eff was between 3.09 × 10- 9and 11.13 × 10- 9m2/s from 60 to 100℃, the activation energy of which was 33.08kJ /mol. Eight different empirical drying models were compared and based on statistical tests results, the Page model gave the best fits and could be used to accurately predict the moisture content of dried broiler chicken wings from 60 to 100℃.The result of quality analysis of end product showed that the value of hardness, chewiness and shear force had significant change at different air temperatures ( p < 0.05) , while the value of springiness, cohesiveness and resilience had no significant change ( p > 0.05) , and the value of hardness, chewiness and shear force had the maximum value under the drying temperature of 90℃; The TBA index and acid value depended more on exposure time than on temperature during drying.The value of k and n of Page model were significantly ( p < 0.05) correlated with D eff, and the value of hardness and shear force were significantly ( p < 0.05) correlated with chewiness.