JUSTIFICATION OF THE CHOICE OF THE SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM OF SUBLIMATION MICROWAVE DRYING OF FOOD PRODUCTS

This work is devoted to the research and substantiation of the technology and scheme of the equipment for drying vegetables, potatoes and fruits. At the same time, it is necessary that the products after such drying retain high quality (biological, nutritional and organoleptic properties), preserve food ingredients well, have an increased regenerative capacity, have little shrinkage and a porous structure. The analysis of existing drying methods showed that sublimation (lyophilization) drying is a promising method. Freeze drying is a process in which water is sublimated by directly converting water from a solid state (ice) to vapor, thus lowering the liquid state, and then desorbs the water from the "dry" layer. It is widely used to stabilize high-quality food, biological materials and pharmaceuticals such as proteins, vaccines, bacteria. The process preserves the quality of the dried product (biological, food and organoleptic properties). This is because the freezing of water in the material before lyophilization inhibits chemical, biochemical and microbiological processes. Therefore, the taste, smell and content of various nutrients do not change. Food raw materials contain a lot of water - from 80 to 95%. The removal of water by sublimation leads to the creation of a highly porous structure of lyophilized products, and rehydration of lyophilized products occurs immediately. The effect of freeze-drying should be considered from the economic aspect and the quality of the freeze-dried material. The cost of the product mainly depends on the freeze drying time. Therefore, process parameters and other conditions of its course are often set so that its time is as short as possible. Setting parameters to speed up the process can lead to deterioration of product properties. Based on the analysis and generalization of data from domestic and foreign sources of information about the technology and the results of theoretical and experimental studies of the process of drying vegetables, potatoes and fruits, the principle scheme of the sublimation microwave dryer of food products is substantiated.