The application of dehumidified air in rapeseed and honeydew honey spray drying - Process performance and powders properties considerations

Rapeseed and honeydew honey were spray dried by dehumidified air, with NUTRIOSE center dot as a drying carrier, to create a product with prebiotic properties, in line with current clean label trend. Because of the low inlet air humidity, drying temperature was decreased (inlet/outlet: 75/50 degrees C). Such an approach gave the possibility to reduce the amount of added carrier. Thus, honey powders containing 80% of honey solids were produced and characterized. Drying was performed with very high powder recovery (84.4-93.9%), especially in the variants containing 80% of honey solids. Although there were some differences in the physical properties between powders produced by the application of dehumidified air and by the traditional spray drying (but containing the same ratio of honey to carrier), the overall properties were comparable: low water content (below 2.5%) and low water activity (below 0.2), medium or high cohesiveness, high hygroscopicity (above 20%), bed porosity between 50 and 70%.