| Summary: | The present study deals with the CFD simulations of the spray drying behavior of tomato juice and its quality. The selected tomatoes were red in color and uniform in size and shape. The TSS and lycopene content of tomato juice were 6.20% and 6.05 mg/100 g respectively. The proportion 60:40 of tomato juice and maltodextrin gave the best result in terms of minimum powder deposition on the drying chamber wall and maximum flavour retention in the final product. Three different inlet temperature (130, 140 and 150°C) were tested with three sets of feed rate (400, 600 and 800 ml/h). Standard k-ε turbulent model accurately predict the flow behaviour in the drying chamber at inlet air temperature 140°C and feed rate 600 ml/h. The moisture content and temperature profiles during spray drying of tomato pulp-maltodextrin mixture were continuously decreased as the distance from automizer increased. The addition of maltodextrin lowers the drying rate. A grid independency test has been carried out for a set of boundary conditions and optimum number of cell volumes was found to be 3.73 lakhs at 140°C. The quality characteristics of spray dried tomato powder were good in terms of color and other functional properties. Therefore, outcomes of the study will be helpful to setup process for production of good quality tomato powder.
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