Thermodynamics - May 2002

News
Department of Mechanical Engineering
National University of Singapore

Issue No. 13
May 2002

Thermodynamics News Dr C Yap

Prof Arun Mujumdar visits China and Thailand

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Prof Arun Mujumdar with the President of Wuxi Spray Drying Co in March 2002.

Professor Mujumdar lectured on New Developments and Future Trends in Food Dehydration at the School of Food Science and Technology of Southern Yangtze University of Wuxi, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing as well as the R&D Centre of Zhejiang Haitong Food Group Co. in Shangyue in March 2002. He has been named Honorary Professor by Southern Yangtze University, which is the sixth such institution in China to confer this honour on Prof. Mujumdar since 1984. He is co-advising three doctoral students there in the field of Heat and Mass Transfer as applied to Frying and Freeze Dehydration. He was invited by Linzhou Drying Equipment Company of Wuxi to visit their R&D and fabrication facilities for spray dryers. This company is the leading vendor of spray drying equipment in China and southeast Asia used by food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Prof Mujumdar lecturing at the First Regional Workshop on Drying Technology, Bangkok, Thailand.
Later in March, Professor Mujumdar also lectured in the Regional Workshop on Drying held in Bangkok and another one organized on the same subject by King Mongkut University of Technology,Thonburi, Bangkok. He also advises doctoral students at KMUTT and Kasetsart University in Bangkok.

For more information, please contact Prof AS Mujumdar.

New Book by Prof Arun Mujumdar and Dr T Kudra
(adapted from Review by Professor Czeslaw Strumillo, Lodz Technical University, Lodz, Poland)

The book spans the whole range of topics in drying techniques and materials ranging from liquids to continuous sheets and describes in an evaluative fashion the method, its advantages and limitations along with the fundamental principles that apply. The book covers a gold mine of potential topics, which are likely to be of interest to academics in search of interesting and challenging research. Industrial practitioners, vendors as well as consultants and designers of dryers and ancillary equipment will find the contents equally beneficial in the book's practical coverage. This book can be used in conjunction with Prof Mujumdar's widely acclaimed Handbook of Industrial Drying (Marcel Dekker, N.Y.) where the reader can find more details about some of the conventional drying technologies for comparison..

This book includes a number of drying techniques for particulates, slurries and, to a certain extent, for continuous sheets. Some are already recognized yet not widely known, viz. heat pump drying, superheated steam and dielectric drying, while others are rather unknown to most e.g., slush drying, Carvar-Greenfield process, or chemical heat pump-assisted drying. The book also covers some special techniques such as simultaneous filtration and drying. Multi-stage drying and hybrid drying techniques are also discussed in some depth as they perform better than component technologies. The authors have taken care to point out the limitations and drawbacks of some of the technologies while discussing their merits for specific application. It is noteworthy that there is always some element of risk when applying a totally new technology but the benefits may outweigh the risks in some situations. Obviously, hybrid and multi-stage operations based on well-proven technologies pose lower risk to end-users than the entirely novel dryers.

For more information, please contact: Prof AS Mujumdar.