Isothermal Thermogravimetry and Factorial Design Applied to Development and Validation of an Oven Drying Method for Cane Syrups

A new and green loss drying method in conventional oven for moisture analysis in cane syrup was developed and in house validated at the first time in this work. According factorial design results, the best conditions of drying in oven were the use of fiber glass paper discs, drying temperature of 70 °C and drying time of 90 min. In-house validation study demonstrated that the developed drying method presents performance comparable to that of Karl Fischer titration in terms of precision and accuracy as verified by results of F-test of variances comparison and of paired t-test. This loss drying method is advantageous because it uses low cost instrumentation, is environmentally friendly since it does not use toxic solvents and it could be applied in quality control laboratories, by supervisory bodies or by small industries. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17807/orbital.v10i3.1114