Moisture desorption-adsorption isotherms and isosteric heats of sorption of Tunisian olive leaves (Olea europaea L.)

Moisture sorption isotherms are valuable tool for prediction of the stability and shelf-life of agricultural products. The aims of this work were to determine sorption isotherms of four varieties of olive leaves and to compare the experimental and calculated results by using models available in the literature. The equilibrium moisture contents of olive leaves were measured using the static gravimetric method, at water activities and temperatures ranging from 0.058 to 0.898 and from 30 to 50 degrees C, respectively Seven models were applied for analysing the experimental data: Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer, modified Oswin, Henderson-Thompson, White and Eiring, Peleg, Smith and Caurie models. The desorption and adsorption data were best fitted by the Peleg model. Thus, this model can be used for the estimation of the equilibrium moisture contents of olive leaves in the investigated ranges of temperature and water activity. The net isosteric heats of desorption and adsorption of olive leaves were calculated by applying the Clausius-Clapeyron equation to the sorption isotherms and an expression for predicting these thermodynamic properties was developed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.