Despite the available general literature in intelligent control, there is a definite lack of knowledge and know-how in practical applications of intelligent control in drying. This book fills that gap. Intelligent Control in Drying serves as an innovative and practical guide for researchers and professionals in the field of drying technologies, providing an overview of control principles and systems used in drying operations, from classical to model-based to adaptive and optimal control. At the same time, it lays out approaches to synthesis of control systems, based on the objectives and control strategies, reflecting complexity of drying process and material under drying. This essential reference covers both fundamental and practical aspects of intelligent control, sensor fusion and dynamic optimization with respect to drying.

The main objectives of this thesis are to develop a system model and an intelligent controller for the meat drying process, which can provide better control accuracy than the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control system. In a meat drying room, important environment variables of temperature and relative humidity are coupled by a nonlinear relationship. Therefore, the design of a nonlinear, intelligent controller is required. The meat drying room system model encompasses both the plant model and the coupling model between temperature and relative humidity. The proposed intelligent controller uses a fuzzy PID control method and a PI-like fuzzy logic control method to limit the fluctuations in the meat drying system. Results show that the performances of the proposed fuzzy PID and PI-like fuzzy control systems are superior in terms of relative humidity control accuracy.

The major objective of this research is to improve the performance of conveyor-belt grain dryers by designing an intelligent control system utilizing the capabilities of the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) to model and control the drying process. To achieve this objective, a laboratory-scale conveyor-belt grain dryer was specifically fabricated for this study. As the main controller in this work, a simplified ANFIS structure is proposed to act as a proportional-integral-derivative (PID)-like feedback controller to control nonlinear systems. This controller has several advantages over its conventional ANFIS counterpart, particularly the reduction in processing time. Moreover, three evolutionary algorithms (EAs), in particular a real-coded genetic algorithm (GA), a particle swarm optimization (PSO), and a global-best harmony search (GHS), were separately used to train the proposed controller and to determine its scaling factors. The simplified ANFIS controller was then applied to control the developed ANFIS-based dryer model. From all the simulation tests, the simplified ANFIS controller has proved its remarkable ability in controlling the grain drying process.

This Fourth Edition book includes 12 new chapters covering computational fluid dynamic simulation; solar, impingement, and pulse combustion drying; drying of fruits, vegetables, sugar, biomass, and coal; physicochemical aspects of sludge drying; and life-cycle assessment of drying systems. Addressing commonly encountered dryers as well as innovative dryers with future potential, the fully revised text not only delivers a comprehensive treatment of the current state of the art, but also serves as a consultative reference for streamlining industrial drying operations to increase energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

A guide to the major food drying techniques and equipment. It features technologies for meats, fruits, vegetables, and seafood. It covers microbial issues and safety. It includes designs for drying systems and manufacturing lines, and information on microbial safety, preservation, and packaging.

Drying of pharmaceutical products, drying of biotechnologicl products, drying of peat and biofuels, druing of fibrous materials, drying ofpulp and paper, of wood and wood products, drying in mineral proces sing, modeling, measurements, and efficeiencies of infrared eryers for paper drying, drying of coal, drying of coated webs, drying of polymersupeheated stema drying, dryer feeder systems, dryer emision control systems, cost estimation methods for dryers, energy aspects in drying safeth aspects of industrial dryers, humidity measurements, control of industrial dryers.