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Engineering Studies on Moisture Diffusivity of Solid Food Products during Processing – A Review
Author(s) -
Subramanyam Rajasekar,
Narayanan Meyyappan,
Rao Dubasi Govardhana
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chembioeng reviews
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.089
H-Index - 22
ISSN - 2196-9744
DOI - 10.1002/cben.201600018
Subject(s) - tray , water content , food spoilage , process engineering , moisture , thermal diffusivity , environmental science , food processing , process (computing) , computer science , engineering , mechanical engineering , food science , materials science , chemistry , physics , geotechnical engineering , quantum mechanics , biology , bacteria , composite material , genetics , operating system
Abstract Drying is a simultaneous heat and mass transfer operation and is extensively applied in food processing to extend the shelf life of food products and agri‐produce by reducing the moisture content which in turn reduces the water activity. Moisture content is a major culprit in spoiling the foods by encouraging microbial/mold growth. Hence, the reducing moisture content economically mitigates the spoilage of foods. A number of commercial dryers is available industrially for carrying out drying operations depending on the nature of food material. However, from economic points of view, tray dryers are ubiquitous. Hence, this review focuses on explaining in‐detail the design of tray dryers with an aid of CFD, mathematical tools, and statistical analysis used in diffusivity of food products. The drying process is influenced by various operating parameters such as drying chamber configuration, air velocity, and air temperature, etc. which need to be optimized to properly design a dryer for a certain duty of operation. This paper reviews the studies in this area by applying mathematical tools, statistical analysis, and CFD.