ABSTRACT
Air drying has been used worldwide for centuries to preserve food and agricultural products. At present, there is an increasing demand for high-quality shelf-stable dried fruits and vegetables. Drying equipment and operating conditions for these products must be selected and designed on the basis of raw material characteristics, quality requirements on the final dry product, and economic analysis. Despite these considerations, application of mathematical modeling and computer simulation in dryer design and optimization is still rather scarce because of the complex nature of the materials and difficulty in quantitatively representing food quality changes during drying.
