This book is divided in three volumes; the first volume is dedicated to fundamentals
of drying FVF, second volume has detailed discussion on drying of various types of food,
while the third volume covers special topics of wide interest. The first volume starts
with basic discussion of relevant principles, terminologies and introduction to advances
in drying of food products followed by a chapter on hygrothermal data for various FVFs.
This is followed by a comprehensive discussion on selection and classification of dryers
for food products. This is followed by chapters on osmotic pretreatments, quality and
safety in food drying, energy optimization and use of renewable sources of energy for
drying of foods. The second volume will cover drying of most of the food variety such as
drying of grains, rice, medical plants, roots, meat products, marine products, exotic
tropical fruits, probiotics and recently popularized functional food and snack food. The
third volume will cover special topics such as Foam mat drying, low temperature drying,
spray drying, microwave drying, vacuum frying and baking of bread. For the time being
we are happy to bring out the first volume of this effort, however, remaining two
volumes will be published soon.
We believe this book is suitable for self-study by engineers and scientists trained in
any discipline and so as for the readers who have some technical background. It should
also be helpful to industrial users of dryers, dryer manufacturers as well as
entrepreneurs. The topics chosen are designed to give readers a quick practical
overview of the subject without going into deep mathematical or theoretical
considerations. It could serve as a text or supplementary text for professional
development short courses as well.
We are grateful to a large number of individuals, mainly the contributors of
individual chapters which are listed following the preface. We are very grateful for their
support in making this e-book available freely. We hope that this book will be useful to
researchers working in food dehydration. We hope that the authors of this book have
succeeded at least partially in achieving goals behind this e-book. We plan to put up
enhanced editions of these books in due time. Response from readers is always welcome
along with ideas for new e-books and offers of chapters.
Sachin Vinayak Jangam, NUS, Singapore
Chung Lim Law, Nottingham University, Malaysia Campus
Arun Sadashiv Mujumdar, NUS, Singapore
Editors