Modeling of mass transfer processes during dehydration of air-dried fish

The study addresses the problems of the Fisheries industry development in the Murmansk region. It has been acknowledged that the percentage of the frozen fish in the output of hydrobionts food products is about 90 %. The focus areas for the Russian Fisheries industry are the increasing share of products with high added value and the development of the domestic consumer market of fishery products. It has been found that the air-dried and dried fish products with defined organoleptic properties is traditionally in strong demand with the population. However, the range of air-dried and dried fish products available for the consumers is rather limited. Moreover, there is a very small part of air-dried and dried fish in the total volume of hydrobionts food products. It is possible to increase the efficiency of air-dried and dried fish production by using the scientific-based process solutions, which allow to reduce the production costs and improve the consumer properties of the finished products. This paper presents the aspects of generalization of the dehydration processes in the production of dried, air-dried and smoked fish. A link between the initial, critical moisture content of fish and the potential conductivity of mass transfer coefficients has been established. A mathematical relation for calculating the duration and modeling the kinetics of drying processes in production of dried and air-dried fish has been determined. The equations for calculating the water diffusion coefficients in the critical points of the kinetics curve have been obtained. The combined use of the received patterns allows to model the dehydration processes when producing the air-dried and dried fish products, calculate the drying time, determine the moisture diffusion coefficients and build dependencies of water distribution in the thickness of the processed object.