Abstract:
Longan is one of the important fruits of economy in Thailand with nearly spherical shape and has
annually exported values of around 60 million US$ for its dried product. A hot air drying is
commonly a technique for producing dried longan. Due to some disadvantages of this hot air drying
technique in long drying time and final product's quality deterioration, microwave drying under
vacuum pressure was proposed as an optional technique in this study for drying longan from an
initial moisture content of approximately 400-500%d.b. (80-83%w.b.) to the final moisture content
of 20%d.b. 08%w.b.). The effects of a microwave power and vacuum pressure on drying kinetics
and qualities of dried longan were studied, viz., 190, 220, 240 and 275 W, and 10, 20 and 30 kPa
respectively. The drying kinetics and qualities of dried longan; in tenns of color, shrinkage,
rehydration, texture and microstructure, and evaluate of sensory and energy consumption of drying
system. The experimental results showed that drying rate increased and drying time of longan
decreased with an increase of microwave power and a decrease of vacuum pressure. The change in
microwave power had more effective to the drying rate than the change in vacuum pressure. High
microwave power and low vacuum pressure gave dried longan with less color change, less
shrinkage, hardness and toughness and a pore lager sizes and also had less specific energy
consumption than at low microwave power and high vacuum pressure. Furthennore, showed that
the dried iongan of experiment gave acceptable more than the dried longan of commercial for
quality evaluation of sensory.