Abstract:
The widely applied method for the dehydration of bio-products is thermal drying. However, owing to high thermo- and xero-liability of biomaterials, the drying process may cause serious damage to the product quality. To minimize the losses of the product quality, drying of biomass with porous carriers was applied. A set of orthogonal experiments were carried out in a laboratory vibro-fluidized bed dryer, and the effect of process parameters on quality retention is also presented. Analysis of the experimental results shows a substantial improvement, compared with that of thermal drying, in the final quality of products in the presence of a porous carrier.