Mujumdar - Current Status of Global R&D in Dryingpublisher for printing in Sep 2008, ADC 2009 (Bangkok, Thailand) and IADC 2009 (Mon-
treal, Canada) have already been held successfully. ADC2011 in Tianjin, China will show
case the rising economic muscle of Asian Tiger economies once again. Separate drying
conferences are held biennially in P.R. China reflecting the high level of interest and ac-
tivity in drying in that country. On the other hand, a large nation like India appears to
have little academic and industrial activity in drying R&D. Further, participation from
the middle eastern countries as well as from the great continent of Africa has tradition-
ally been at a low level as well.
As far as industrial sectors are concerned, food and agriculture remain the most do-
minant sectors in view of the critical importance of drying to their industry – typically
over 50 percent of the IDS content is devoted to this area. Regrettably there is a decline
in R&D activity in the paper drying area after several attempts to commercialize several
new drying concepts for the modern paper machine failed in the seventies and eighties.
Drying of wood is a major problem of great interest to the forest products industry.
However, IDS has had to contend with biennial meetings which deal exclusively with
wood drying which have in recent years been held at about the same time but in differ-
ent parts of the world. In future, as in the early years of IDS, I hope that we will see
greater participation in IDSs by the forest products industry. Drying of coatings is
another area of immense industrial interest that is inadequately represented at IDS
meetings once again due to specialized meetings in the topical area. The same is true for
drying of ceramics, advanced materials and freeze drying of pharmaceutical products
and bio-products of extreme heat-sensitivity.
The format of IDS conferences has remained largely unchanged since its inception. It
consists of several keynote lectures, several parallel sessions in lecture format and post-
er sessions to accommodate the increasing number of technical contributions. I believe
that each IDS has had the critical mass required for a fruitful interaction and yet has
been small enough to allow development of personal contacts which could later flourish
into valuable joint R&D projects.
Several hundred dryer configurations and operating modes have been discussed in
various papers presented at IDSs over the past years (Mujumdar, 1995). It appears that
only a few of these have reached commercialization. I believe that a greater interaction
is needed between those who generate and validate new dryer concepts and those who
actually commercialize them, e.g., vendors. Except for the few internationally recognized
dryer equipment manufacturers the participation by vending companies has been at a
low level. I hope that in years to come this will change and we will see a greater impact
of drying R&D on industrial drying equipment. Much of the development of industrial
dryers today seems to follow an evolutionary process involving incremental changes. It
is my fervent hope that there will be a more rapid and dramatic improvement in the de-
sign and performance of industrial drying systems by enhanced technology transfer via
IDS meetings. Innovation resulting from creativity is central to any R&D. The time re-
quired to bring a novel visionary idea into the field is long especially for drying tech-
niques, which have long “shelf life.” Nevertheless, the quest for relevance in drying R&D
must continue. I believe that IDS will continue to provide the necessary impetus for such
activity.