Mujumdar - Current Status of Global R&D in Drying
It was in 1985 that I suggested to Dr. Carl W. Hall, then Editor of Drying Technology- An International Journal and Deputy Director for Engineering at the National Science
Foundation, Washington D.C., that since IDS had matured and developed its own mo-
mentum and recognition around the world, it was time to honor those who have made
outstanding contributions to the field. Much to my delight Dr. Hall accepted the idea and
went ahead to seek successfully sponsors for four major awards that were initiated at
IDS'86 held on the august campus of MIT, Cambridge, MA. This program has now
evolved into a major event with the support of large multi-national companies. I believe
that this program in its own right has helped promote drying as a viable research area
worthy of serious investigation. It has also helped bring “new blood” into drying R&D –
an extremely important and desirable by-product of the success of IDS. ADC series have
already started a Major Awards program from its very inception.
India has awakened recently and initiated significant drying R&D activity particular-
ly at Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. A number of workshops have been held
very successfully focusing on drying but also incorporating filtration and crystallization
to meet the needs of the growing chemical industry of India. Indeed, IDS2008 was held
very successfully in Hyderabad in October 2008. In the coming years I expect China, Iran,
Brazil and several western European countries to drive drying R&D in the next decade.
Currently the contribution from North America, Japan, UK etc to the global archival lite-
rature in drying is miniscule by any standard. However, the total output on global scale
is up due to more intensive activity in the rapidly emerging economies with strong man-
ufacturing base. As expected, service-dominated economies have lesser need for drying
R&D.
9. 3. CLOSING REMARKS
An important feature of IDS since its very inception has been the formal publication
of the technical papers presented at the meetings so that relevant knowledge is made
available globally. Since the meetings are not obviously accessible to all the interested
parties around the world an important part of IDS tasks has been to edit and publish the
bound proceedings volumes. Indeed, some 4000 papers have been presented at IDS
meetings to date and a majority of them are (some are out-of-print now) available to the
worldwide community. In recent years, bound preprint volumes of IDS proceedings
have been supplied to all attendees (and a limited number to external bodies) while only
a small number of selected (typically only 10-20%) papers has been refereed and pub-
lished in special IDS issues of Drying Technology – An International Journal (Drying
Technology has also its devoted special issues to other major drying conferences around
the world to keep its readership well informed about the R&D activities worldwide). The
selectivity of these issues is necessarily very high. In view of the glowing success of IDS
over the years, it is reasonable to expect that future IDS meetings will continue the suc-
cessful streak and contribute to advances in industrial drying technologies.
The IDS series have been proven to catalyze drying R&D around the globe and it is
my fervent hope that it will continue to do so for another decade at least. The rapidly
rising interest in drying has led to evolution of complementary drying conferences
around the world which demonstrates the significance of the IDS movement itself. I