Microwave assisted osmotic dehydration (MWOD) under continuous medium flow conditions is a new process with good potential for quality optimization. It combines microwave process with osmotic dehydration and improves the mass transfer rate of osmotic dehydration process and product quality. The thesis describes the design and development of this process. / Preliminary studies on osmotic dehydration were carried out in two parts. First, the effects of processing time, temperature and solution concentration on mass transfer under conventional osmotic dehydration process were investigated and suitable ranges of parameters: 40-60°C, 40-60°Brix and 3h, for further osmotic dehydration kinetics study were identified. Then, the osmotic dehydration efficiency under continuous flow condition process was evaluated. For this, a continuous flow osmotic contactor was developed and found to be an efficient process in terms of osmotic dehydration of apple cylinders. Solids diffusivity (Ds) was lower in continuous flow osmotic dehydration process compared with conventional osmotic dehydration correspondents (P<0.05). Being a separate operation unit, the dehydration process and solution management can be done in a more efficient way in this process. / Following the preliminary studies, the osmotic contactor was relocated under a microwave oven so that heating and mass transfer operations could be facilitated by continuous microwave treatment providing a microwave assisted osmotic dehydration (MWOD) process. Compared with conventional osmotic dehydration (COD), moisture loss (ML%), solids gain (SG%) and mass transport coefficients (km and ks) of MWOD were improved, the average k m was increased 80% and the average ks was decreased 20%, respectively. Moreover, product rehydration property and color profile were improved. Microwave heating had an important effect on water transfer during the osmotic dehydration. Application of microwave heating to osmotic dehydration process facilitated in increasing moisture loss from the sample and simultaneously restricted the product's solute gain. Higher moisture loss in mass transfers area helped to control and strongly counters the solids gain. / Modeling of the mass transfer phenomenon is necessary to optimize osmotic dehydration processes to have a high product quality at minimum energy costs. To explain the simultaneous mass-flow in an osmo-dehydration process, evaluation of equilibrium kinetics is important. Pseudo-equilibrium (practical equilibrium) and dynamic period data are necessary for estimating the time of osmotic process, and ultimate mass transport of the solutes and water, and hence these data were gathered. / The effect of osmotic dehydration treatment on sample subsequent air drying behavior and product quality parameters were investigated. Compared with control samples, osmostically treated samples moisture diffusivity during subsequent air drying process was reduced over same moisture content range: from 1.18*10-9m2/s to 0.77*10-9--1.07*10 -9 m2/s. Drying rates of MWOD pretreated samples varied depending on treatment conditions. MWOD pretreatment shifted product's color profile to those that can be achieved under freeze drying conditions. / Sorption isotherms induced by osmotic dehydration were studied, using a gravimetric-static method, and fitted to GAB model. Adsorption isotherms of products were affected by drying method and osmotic dehydration pretreatment conditions. Adsorption isotherms of osmo-air dried apple cylinders followed type II isotherms (Sigma shaped curve). Monolayer (Mm) values of the osmo-air dried products were reduced. Sorption isotherms of osmotically treated-air dried products were shifted from the control isotherms. / Overall, this work has demonstrated potential of microwave heating for improving moisture transfer during osmotic dehydration and microwave osmotic treatment on subsequent air drying and resulting product quality, as well as the importance of equilibrium kinetics study in process modeling.

Since cranberry skin is thick and has low porosity, skin pretreatments were considered before drying in order to facilitate water diffusion. Mechanical and chemical pretreatments were considered, by cutting the fruits in half, by making pin holes in each cranberry, and by dipping the fruits in an alkaline solution. / A second pretreatment seemed necessary when drying cranberries in order to reduce their tartness. Cranberries were osmotically dehydrated, by immersing them in osmotic solutions of sucrose or high fructose corn syrup. / Once the pretreatment conditions were selected, four drying methods were tested on the pretreated cranberries. These methods included hot air drying, freeze-drying, vacuum drying and a combination of hot air and microwaves. A quality evaluation of the dried samples was also performed, including evaluation of overall appearance, taste, color, water activity, rehydration capacity and texture. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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There is no abstract available for this thesis. / Department of Physics and Astronomy

This dissertation outlines work taken towards the understanding, implementation, and improvements to the process of creating of quantitative images of the bulk-electrical parameters of the interior of unknown objects via the use of electromagnetic scattering data. Improvements are considered to both theory and experiments using low-power radiation in the microwave frequency range, known as Microwave Tomography (MWT). A detailed derivation of the Multiplicative-Regularized Contrast-Source Inversion (MR-CSI) method is given, and we compare the performance of MR-CSI with the other leading inversion technique used in MWT: the Gauss Newton/Distorted Born Iterative Method. The inversion results of the two algorithms are very similar, and thus most of the differences between them are in the relative ease of implementation and computational resource use. We further introduce a new version of the CSI algorithm, based on the Finite-Difference method. Using this algorithm, we show that when accurate information about a scatterer is known before the inversion process, this information is best utilized as an artificial computational background, as opposed to an initial guess of the scatterer. The MWT problem is also formulated inside of a conductive enclosure, which significantly changes the physics, and resultant Green's function, of the MWT problem. The implications and possible advantages of this type of MWT are discussed, and synthetic inversion results for a circular enclosed system are presented. These results show that the enclosure is capable of improving the inversion in some regions, although more research is required to realize the full potential of conductive-enclosure MWT. In the final section, experimental results from both open-region and conductor-enclosed type MWT systems developed at the University of Manitoba are shown. For the open-region system, we show that antenna coupling is a major factor affecting the data collection, and provide a simple method for avoiding the frequencies where this coupling is too strong to prevent effective imaging. For the conductor-enclosed type system, we have found the system to be extremely sensitive to presence of antennas in the chamber, and show that effective MWT imaging is possible in this type of system by taking the antenna elements into account in the inverse solver.

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