Abstract:The aim of this study was to explore the effects of different drying conditions on the characteristics of desalinated sea cucumbers undergoing air impingement drying（AID）and to improve the quality and shorten the drying time of dried sea cucumber products.In this study，the effects of AID temperatures（50，60，70 ℃）and wind speeds（4，6，8 m/s）on the drying characteristics，effective moisture diffusion coefficient（Deff），drying activation energy，puff up index and amino acid contents of desalted sea cucumbers were investigated.Six commonly used drying models were employed to fit the drying curves，and hot air drying（HAD）was used as a control.The results showed that at the wind speed of 6 m/s，the drying time of desalted sea cucumber under different drying temperatures of AID was reduced by 6.67%-33.33% compared with HAD at 60 ℃.The wind speed had no significant effect on the drying time of desalted sea cucumbers at 60 ℃.There was no significant difference in rehydration ratio under different drying conditions.The amino acid content（45.91-47.54）g/100 g of AID sea cucumbers increased with the increase of temperature.Under the same conditions，the amino acid content of AID sea cucumbers increased by 4.46% compared with HAD sea cucumbers.The highest Deff of AID sea cucumber was 2.134×10-9 and the activation energy was 16.38 kJ/mol.Comparing the model evaluation indexes，Page model had a higher fitting degree（R2>0.99），with a prediction error of only 2.01%，which could accurately predict the water change pattern of desalted sea cucumber during AID process.This study may provide a theoretical basis for predicting and controlling AID process of sea cucumber.