Drying Technologies For Foods

Book excerpt: Drying is an important unit operation used in the industry for processing and preservation of food products. Food industry always looks for cost effective and energy efficient drying techniques to commercially succeed in their ventures and to fulfill demand of high quality dried food products. Although a large volume of technical literature is available on drying of foods, it is still quite challenging for scientists and engineers to improve upon the existing drying systems and quality of the products. The book consists of 14 chapters detailing freeze drying, atmospheric freeze drying, swell drying, multi-flash drying, electro-hydrodynamic drying, pulse combustion drying, foam mat drying, ultrasound- assisted drying and fluidized bed drying. It also includes chapters which are commodity-specific such as mushroom drying, drying and roasting of cocoa and coffee beans. The degradation mechanism and kinetics of vitamin C degradation in fruits and vegetables, kinetics modeling of drying process for the recovery of bioactive compounds and energy calculation procedures for dryers is also covered which would be helpful to improve dryer operation and efficiency.