EXPERIMENT NO

OBJECT
Determination of moisture and volatile matter by air oven method

MATERIALS
 Air oven
 Moisture dish
 dessicator

THEORY
HOT AIR OVEN
A hot air oven is a type of dry heat sterilization.

Dry heat sterilization is used on equipment that cannot be wet and on material that will not melt,
catch fire, or change form when exposed to high temperatures. Moist heat sterilization uses water
to boil items or steam them to sterilize and doesn't take as long as dry heat sterilization.
Examples of items that aren't sterilized in a hot air oven are surgical dressings, rubber items, or
plastic material.

Items that are sterilized in a hot air oven include:

 Glassware (like petri dishes, flasks, pipettes, and test tubes)

 Powders (like starch, zinc oxide, and sulfadiazine)
 Materials that contain oils
 Metal equipment (like scalpels, scissors, and blades)

Hot air ovens use extremely high temperatures over several hours to destroy microorganisms and
bacterial spores. The ovens use conduction to sterilize items by heating the outside surfaces of
the item, which then absorbs the heat and moves it towards the center of the item.

The commonly-used temperatures and time that hot air ovens need to sterilize materials is

 170 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes,

 160 degrees Celsius for 60 minutes,
 and 150 degrees Celsius for 150 minutes.

Pure oils and fats contain practically no water, but processed

lipid-rich materials may contain substantial amounts of water (from about

15% in margarine and mayonnaise to 40% in salad dressings).

PROCEDURE
1. Weight accurately 5gm of test sample into a tare moisture dish that has been dried and
cooled previously in a dessicator.
2. Place in air oven and dry for 90 minutes at 130C.
3. Remove from the oven and cool to room temperature in dessicator and weight.
4. Perform three tests and calculate standard deviation among the results.

OBSERVATION AND CALCULATION

Sample Sample weight Sample weight %moisture and Standard
(gm) after drying (gm) volatile matter deviation

DISCUSSION
1) What is moisture content?
Moisture content is the amount of water present in a food sample. Water in food found in three
forms i.e. free, bound and capillary. The moisture content is determined by measuring the mass
of a food before and after the water is removed by drying.

2) Why weight of oil increases rather than decreasing after drying?

The most common method applied for the determination of moisture content is oven drying
method. But in case of fats & oils determination of moisture content, this method is not suitable
without creating a vacuum. Because the oxygen present in the oven oxidize the oil sample and
instead of decreasing weight due to moisture loss, the weight will increase as shown in our
experimental results and create error.

In an oven drying method, the sample is heated under specified conditions, and the loss of weight
is used to calculate the moisture content of the sample. The amount of moisture determined is
highly dependent on the type of oven used, conditions within the oven, and the time and
temperature of drying.