Author Description

Convective drying is an effective post-harvest method to the extend shelf life of vegetables and to reduce the mass for transportation. The heat load during drying, however, affects the quality attributes negatively. Today, consumers in the industrialized world pay a raised attention on food quality, and especially to the nutritional value of food. This increased demand on quality has become a challenge for drying research, and to retain the nutritional value, mild drying conditions must be applied. However, at these conditions the energy efficiency to remove the water from the product by evaporation is low; often below 50%. Moreover, due to the growing global market for dried products, drying contributes more and more to the global energy consumption and CO2-emission. Hence, there is a need for high energy efficient drying methods with low CO2-emission. A straightforward solution to increase drying energy efficiency is high temperature drying, but these conditions are conflicting with the aim to retain nutritional components. To combine these two aims, i.e. energy efficient drying and retention of nutritional components, is a challenge for drying research..