Objective
Objectives and Problems to be Solved: In Europe an estimated 26million tonnes of water is dried from food products each year, with over 80% of this being through the use of evaporation with hot air. The problem with this method is that although relatively simple to operate and flexible, wastes energy at a rate of 117,00Gj per year, since the heat contained within the extracted water/air is too low grade to make recovery possible. The alternative technology of airless drying uses pure steam as a high-efficiency drying medium and allows the collection of output heat through exchangers and hot water usage, has the potential to save up to 75% of the current energy loss. However, to date the focus on to monolithic pressurised steaming systems has led to prohibitively high capital cost to provide safe continuous running. There are a number of technical challenges to be addressed if these costs are to be reduced. The overall objective of the project is to develop a non-pressure steaming approach, with a man metric sealing method for continuous production with features for maximised energy efficiency. Description of the work: The proposed work comprises data collection and analysis, experimental trials at laboratory and pilot plant scale and techno-economic modelling studies, and will address the following key issues:
- Evaluation of the technical and economic and the scientific issues regarding of drying approach on the quality of the food products.
- Identification of operational parameters for optimum process performance in terms of atmospheric conditions, residence times, energy recycling and product quality.
- Validation of the operational performance of the pilot-plant in an industrial environment, trialing up to 3 different products.
- Evaluation of the commercial viability of a continuous atmospheric-pressure airless drying system Expected Results and Exploitation Plans: The results of the work will allow an assessment of the technical and economic viability of the technology and the resulting effect on the environmental impact. These results will be used to identify appropriate ways to address follow-on work to commercialise the process. The results of the project will be presented and disseminated at relevant workshop meetings, exhibitions and conferences. A range of companies interested in the technology will be invited to the case study site for practical demonstrations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
ST3 5JU STOKE-ON-TRENT
United Kingdom