## 3 Results and Discussion
### Determination of Significant Factors in Moisture Loss during the OD Operation  
Implementing a draining operation allowed less manipulation of the evaluated samples, especially when executing OD as pretreatment of convective drying. This is because trays were designed so that their bottom had the opening size of the selected mesh. [PERSON] [38] demonstrates this, by applying OD on pieces of papaya with a draining time of  
Figure 4: Retained water as a function of time. Figure 3: OD samples; (**A**) 75% NaCl and 4:1; (**B**) at 75% NaCl and 8:1. 30 min prior to convective drying at 60 \({}^{\circ}\)C and obtaining as a result, that an excessive loss of nutrients and less handling of the samples was avoided. To estimate the process factors that significantly influence moisture loss during the OD process, a sieving design with a 23 factorial arrangement was applied for the factors: concentration of the osmotic agent at two levels (30% and 60%), the solution-to-sample ratio at two levels (3:1 and 5:1), and immersion time at two levels (1.5 h and 4.5 h), using the moisture percentage as a response variable. Table 2 lists the results obtained for moisture in the respective sieving test. The standardized Pareto diagram (Figure 5) illustrates the results exposed by the ANOVA, in terms of significance (\(p<0.05\)) of the factors concentration of NaCl, solution-to-sample ratio, and interaction. Osmotic agent concentration is the factor that most affects moisture loss of the bagasse when it is subject to a DO process. While the time factor has no significant effect on the studied response variable. Figure 6, on its part, shows that the concentration of osmotic agent can lower the moisture percentage from approximately 90% (which is the initial moisture value of fresh \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Concentration (\%NaCl)** & **Ratio s:m (g sol/g m)** & **Time (h)** & **Moisture (\%)** \\ \hline
30 & 3 & 1.5 & 71.794 \\
60 & 3 & 1.5 & 37.616 \\
30 & 5 & 1.5 & 69.832 \\
60 & 5 & 1.5 & 28.449 \\
30 & 3 & 4.5 & 70.435 \\
60 & 3 & 4.5 & 37.911 \\
30 & 5 & 4.5 & 70.019 \\
60 & 5 & 4.5 & 29.429 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* Fresh cassava bagasse has moistureof 87.7%, when working with a hypertonic solution at 60% NaCl and a solution-to-sample ratio of 5:1, it was possible to bring this moisture mean content up to 28.94%.  
Only the osmotic agent concentration and solution-to-sample ratio factors were significant (\(p<0.05\)) for bagasse moisture loss during the OD process (Table 3).  
\end{table} 
Table 2: Moisture results according to the sieving test. Figure 5: Standardized Pareto Chart. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Source** & **Sum of Squares** & **DF** & **Mean Square** & **F-Ratio** & \(p\)**-Value** \\ \hline A: Concentration & 2763.01 & 1 & 2763.01 & 29851.85 & 0.0037 * \\ B: ratio s:m & 50.1326 & 1 & 50.1326 & 541.64 & 0.0273 * \\ C: Time & 0.00133903 & 1 & 0.00133903 & 0.01 & 0.9238 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* significant for a significance level of 0.05.  
\end{table} 
Table 3: Analysis of Variance for the moisture sieving test obtained in the OD process. cassava bagasse) to values between approximately 71% and 33%. [PERSON] et al. [39] managed to reduce the moisture content of pumpkins from about 90% to about 31%, after 3 h of OD in a hypertonic solution with 60% sucrose and 9% NaCl. For their part, [PERSON] [31] and [PERSON] et al. [40] obtained moisture values of 12.28 and 14.27% when using concentrations of 60 and 65% sucrose on blueberries and mamey, respectively. Figure 6 also illustrates the incidence of the factor solution to sample ratio on the variation of the bagasse moisture percentage, that although it has a significant effect, it is lower or less marked than the effect given by the osmotic agent concentration and the null effect of the immersion time on the response variable. [PERSON] et al. [40] and [PERSON] et al.