| In order to enrich the varieties of dried flowers on the market and meet people's needs for dried
flowers, this article explored the production process of dried kapok flowers. The flowers were pretreated by Ethanol
and 10% citric acid mixed solution to keep the colour first. Then they should be embedded in silica gel powder with a
diameter of 0.5-1 mm. The experiment on kapok drying was conducted in two different drying machine, a thermostat
and a modified microwave oven. From the experiment, we came to several conclusions. The pretreatment of kapok
with the color-preserving agent and embedding agent could improve the appearance of dried flowers. Kapok was
not suitable for drying with a hot air oven for the reason that being dried by the constant-temperature hot-air for a
long drying time would lead to the uneven color and yellowing of the finished flower. By contrast, microwave drying
could bring better overall quality and shorter drying cycle. It was a more suitable drying process to use two kinds of
microwave combination drying schemes, such as continue heated with 800 W heating for 5 minutes then 200 W for 2
minutes, or continue heated with 400 W for 1 minute after 800 W heating for 5 minutes. |
