Abstract
Microwave cooking of sweet potato involves temperature, moisture content and volume changes that strongly coupled. A microwave heating simulation model considering heat and mass transport coupled with large volume change due to moisture loss was developed and solved numerically. Results from modeling agreed with the experimental results in starch gelatinization process as observed by a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Moisture content measurement also carried out to verify the model at microwave radiation power of 400W and 600W. The model was applied to optimize intermittent on-off heating of diced sweet potato with fixed microwave radiation power of 125W. The result of this simulation showed that the intermittent on-off heating could lead to more uniform temperature distribution within the sample while constraining the maximum surface temperature of 65℃ to prevent inactivation of - amylase that helped producing sugars. The development of this study is useful to improve the quality of cooked sweet potato.
