New hybrid drying technologies

Abstract

One of the main contributions of the twentieth century has been to lay the fundamental platform for new technology to emerge. As technology advances to new frontiers, the method to dehydrate food is constantly evolving to produce new hybrid drying systems. Some of the hybrid drying techniques, if combined in an intelligent fashion, would promote efficient drying in terms of enhanced product quality and reduction in energy consumption. However, R&D effort is still required to study system scale-up, optimization, and control of these hybrid systems. Since product quality and energy consumption are usually the primary concerns during food dehydration, there is still scope to discover new drying technologies. It is hoped that in the coming years, more hybrid systems can be developed to handle even the most complex bioproduct drying problems. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.