The particulate materials are ubiquitous and are widely manufactured for improving the versatility of solids. Seeds and grains are natural particulate materials. The particulates are smaller in size and need specially designed dryers equipped for dehydration. Particulate drying was performed for agricultural products such as grain and seeds. Several efforts and design modifications were introduced onto traditional driers to mitigate the operational cost of driers. Liquid materials are frequently dried to produce particulates. A drum dryer is a conventional technology used for dehydrating liquid feeds. It is recommended to concentrate the liquid feed to a slurry prior to drying. This chapter summarizes innovative dryers that are going through the research and development stage. The application of spouted beds in hybrid mode with other technologies also has the potential to reduce the drying time, and generate a product with more retention of volatiles, better quality characteristics, and phenolic compounds.

This chapter presents a general introduction to drying of particulate materials, a brief discussion on classification and selection of dryers, and the importance of particulate drying in industries. Drying may be applied to the processing of raw material or intermediate product into a finished product. For the processing industry, it is a challenge in determining the desirable final moisture content because most industrial players are not aware of the importance of finding the suitable final moisture content as well as equilibrium moisture content in a storage condition. Particle-form solids in bulk may appear in a wide range of particle size distributions. Drying kinetics is one of the most important pieces of information when it comes to selection of dryers. The nature of the moisture, location of the moisture, mechanisms of moisture transfer, physical properties of product, and conditions of the drying medium all have importance in the selection of a suitable dryer and the apt operating conditions.

Developing responsible learners is one of the key education challenges of our time. Education literature suggests that for students to see themselves as active and necessary participants in their own learning, it is important that they view themselves as stakeholders in education. This research aims at exploring the effectiveness of instructional activities including peer assessment, course review & content selection, and reciprocal peer teaching in facilitating students taking ownership of their learning. Student feedback shows that majority of the students perceived these activities ‘useful’ or ‘very useful’ in inculcating in them a sense of belonging - paving the way towards developing responsible learners.

Drying of solids involves complex coupling of transient transport phenomena with material science. The objective of any drying operation is not just to remove water (or any liquid) as rapidly as possible but to do so while ensuring that the desired dried product specifications are met. Typically, constraints of quality override the best conditions for heat and mass transfer. More often than not, the physical structure of the dried product is one of the key quality requirements. For food materials, physical structure affects not only the rehydration ability but also the shape, texture, appearance, and strength of the product. The structure is affected by nearly all of the dryer parameters and operating conditions employed for any given material. Thus, the dryer type and operating variables like temperature, humidity, drying medium used, mode of heat transfer, operating pressure, and rate of drying can affect the development of structure and even the shape of the product. It is not possible to make quantitative generalizations about the effect of various parameters on the structure of a given product in a specific dryer type. Some qualitative generalizations can be made for some products. This brief article will attempt to summarize the more commonly known effects for select food materials.

KEYWORDS: Aflatoxinsartificial neural networkfluidized bed dryingfood dryinginfrared dryingmicrowave dryingsuperheated steam drying

Over the last decades, the palm oil industry has been growing rapidly due to increasing demands for food, cosmetic, and hygienic products. Aside from producing palm oil, the industry generates a huge quantity of residues (dry and wet) which can be processed to produce biofuel. Driven by the necessity to find an alternative and renewable energy/fuel resources, numerous technologies have been developed and more are being developed to process oil-palm and palm-oil wastes into biofuel. To further develop these technologies, it is essential to understand the current stage of the industry and technology developments. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the palm oil industry, review technologies available to process oil palm and palm oil residues into biofuel, and to summarise the challenges that should be overcome for further development. The paper also discusses the research and development needs, technoeconomics, and life cycle analysis of biofuel production from oil-palm and palm-oil wastes. (C) 2016 BRTeam. All rights reserved.

1College of Science, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou 310018, China 2Hubei Subsurface Multi-Scale Imaging Key Laboratory, Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China 3Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2A7 4Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585 5School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

"Announcement: Professor Arun S. Mujumdar Conferred National Award for International Cooperation by China." Drying Technology, 32(5), pp. 624–625

The objective of the study is to investigate the effects of inlet flow pulsation on the mixing and reaction performance of a heterogeneous gaseous T-junction microreactor numerically. The idea is to have a novel modular microreactor design comprised of two microreactors (A and B), arranged in parallel, and a valve to control the flow direction. Flow pulsation can then be implemented to alternately supply reactant to microreactor A and microreactor B. Hence, by feeding the same amount of reactant and thus same pumping power/parasitic loads, the new design is able to run two microreactors and could achieve almost the same level of performance as that of a steady flow microreactor with an expense of one microreactor. The study was carried out for a case of mixing and heterogeneous catalytic reaction of methane (gaseous fuel) oxidation at the microreactor surface coated with a platinum catalyst. A detailed parametric study was performed to include the effect of frequency, amplitude, phase difference, and different waveforms on the conversion rate of gaseous fuel and pressure drop across the microreactor. The results suggest that the flow pulsation marginally affects the reaction performance, in which, the whole novel modular system produces almost double yields and energy (temperature) than that of conventional steady flow single microreactor design under the same amount of inlet reactants. This highlights the potential of this novel design in saving energy, enhancing reactants utilization, and increasing yield production for several applications.

Passive heat transfer enhancement using a slurry of microencapsulated phase-change material (MEPCM) flowing in a laminar regime through a coiled duct of square cross section was evaluated. The phase-change material is n-octadecane. The flow behavior and heat transfer performance of water and MEPCM suspensions in various configurations (conical spiral, in-plane spiral, and helical spiral) of coiled tubes of square cross section was investigated. The results are compared with those for water as the base fluid flowing through a straight tube. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is used to simulate the laminar flow of water with MEPCM suspension in these geometries. The liquid suspension properties are expressed as functions of the volumetric concentration of MEPCM particles and the temperature. Improved heat transfer performance was obtained as the concentration of MEPCM suspension increased from 1 to 10%. However, the overall performance in terms of the pumping power consumed for unit heat transferred worsened.

Thermal drying is a highly energy-consuming process found in almost all industries accounting for between 10–20% of national industrial energy consumption in the developed economies of the world. It is arguably the oldest unit operation and yet R&D in this area is only a few decades old. Over 50% of products consumed by humans are in particulate form so that drying of wet particulates as well as feedstock such as solutions, suspensions or pasty solids is of great industrial interest. Efficient drying technologies must produce engineered dry particulates of desired quality at minimum cost, low carbon footprint and little environmental impact. This article attempts to provide a global overview of recent advances in drying technologies most of which represent evolutionary innovations. In order to reduce investment costs one needs to enhance drying rates within limits imposed by the product properties and end product quality requirements. Several novel gas-particle contactors for example have been evaluated for drying. Combined modes of heating and hybrid dryers can improve drying performance in some cases. Recent interest in production of nanoparticles by wet processing also has stimulated interest in drying to produce nanoparticles. Drying of heat sensitive biotech and pharmaceutical products also pose new challenges. A capsule overview is presented of recent developments including enhancements in conventional drying technologies as well as more innovative new technologies.

Thermal dehydration is the most common and cost-effective technique for the preservation of foods and for the production of traditional as well as innovative processed products such as snacks with desired functionalities. This chapter provides an overview of recent developments in thermal drying technologies that are already commercialized or show potential of industrial exploitation upon successful R&D to sort out some limitations. New dehydration technologies are needed to enhance quality, reduce energy consumption, improve safety, and reduce environmental impact. Mathematical modeling can be used for the cost-effective development of novel designs to reduce the cost and time required for innovation. As examples of some emerging drying techniques this chapter provides relevant details on heat-pump-assisted drying, superheated steam drying, pulse combustion spray drying, variable pressure drop drying (swell drying), and novel gas-particle contactors such as impinging streams and pulsed fluidized beds. Multistage drying, intermittent drying, and the use of hybrid drying technologies that combine the advantages of different dryer types without some of their limitations will be outlined.

IDS2012, the 18th biennial conference series initiated by Professor Arun S. Mujumdar in 1978 at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, was held successfully in the beautiful historic city of Xiamen...