Mass Balances in Porous Foods Impregnation

A simple model based on mass balance equations is proposed for prediction of the final mass and composition of products subjected to vacuum impregnation. It was applied to some tropical fruits in a fruit‐sucrose solution system. The phenomenon can be described in terms of volumetric fraction of impregnating solution as the basic modeling parameter, instead of effective porosity. To use the equations of the model, only routine laboratory equipment and simple experiments are required. Prediction of the final weight of impregnated fruit was accomplished with an average absolute error of 2 to 3%, while in final composition of the fruit (total solids), it was 5.7 %.