SPRAY-DRIED HONEY POWDER

Durmuş SERT* Hasan İbrahim KOZAN† and Talha DEMİRC݆

* Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Department of Food Engineering, Konya University, Konya, 42060, Turkey
† Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Food Engineering, Selcuk University, Konya, 42079, Turkey

Honey is a natural biological product that compries of simple sugars (glucose and
fructose: 70-80%), water (10-20%), and other minor constituents such as organic acids,
mineral salts, vitamins, proteins, phenolic compounds, and free amino acids.
İn liquid honey processes involving mass production, many problems are encountered
due to its viscous and sticky nature in e Therefore there is a growing demand for dried honey
powder by both consumers and industry. Honey powder with its low moisture content has the
ability to be easily blended with other ingredients apart from other advantages including
convenience, ease of handling, reduced storage space, sanitation and storage for a longer
period. Various methods of drying honey have been used such as tunnel drying, vacuum
drying, spray drying and solidification into blocks by crystallization.
Spray drying is a common drying technique in food industries to convert liquid to
powder form. It involves the transformation of liquid feed through a hot medium (air) in order
to produce product in powder form. The spray dried powders have longer shelf life and
resemble the quality of the original liquid feed. The spray dried products can be classified into
two groups, nonsticky and sticky. Examples of nonsticky products are dairy powders,
microencapsulated powders and egg powders. Fruit and vegetable juice powders, honey
powders and lactose powders belong to sticky products. Sticky products are difficult to spray
dried under normal conditions and exhibit sticky behaviour due to rich in sugars (sucrose,
glucose, lactose and fructose) and organic acids (citric, malic and tartaric acid). In order to
achieve a successful drying, high molecular weight drying agent materials such as
maltodextrin has been used in spray drying of sticky products.
There is a necessity to detailed studies about determining storage stability of honey
powder produced different drying methods and agents. Identfying of drying norms and
exhibiting moistures absorptions during storage period carry weight. Observing of microbial
load of liquid honey during drying process is also important.

Keywords: Spray drying, honey powder, drying agent, maltodextrin