Kaveh, M.Golpour, I.Goncalves, J. C.Ghafouri, S.Guiné, Raquel2021-03-292021-03-292021Kaveh M, Golpour I, Gonçalves JC, Ghafouri S, Guiné RPF. (2021) Determination of drying kinetics, speci fi c energy consumption, shrinkage, and colour properties of pomegranate arils submitted to microwave and convective drying. Open Agriculture, 6(1), 230-242.http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/6707In this study, the drying kinetics, e ff ective moisture di ff usivity (D e ff ) , speci fi c energy consumption ( SEC ) , colour, and shrinkage (S b ) of pomegranate arils were compared when dried by convective ( CV ) drying and microwave ( MW ) drying. The experiments were per - formed at air temperature of 50, 60, and 70°C and air velocity of 1 m/s for CV drying and 270, 450, and 630 W for MW drying. The results showed that increasing air temperature and MW power increased the D e ff. The cal - culations demonstrated that the maximum D e ff for pome - granate arils was obtained for MW drying ( 630 W ) . Maximum SEC for pomegranate arils in the CV dryer was 145.12 kWh/kg, whereas in the MW dryer was 35.42 kWh/kg. In MW dryer, the lowest values of colour change and shrinkage were 6.77 and 50.5%, respec - tively. Comprehensive comparison of the di ff erent drying methods ( MW and CV ) revealed that MW drying had best drying performance for pomegranate arils, considering the drying time, e ff ective moisture di ff usion, SEC, colour, and shrinkageengColorEnergyConvective dryingMicrowave dryingPomegranateShrinkagejournal article