High-Precision Laboratory Dryer for Characterization of the Drying Behavior of Agricultural and Food Products
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this case study research, a high precision laboratory dryer HPD TF3+ has been developed for characterization of the drying behavior of food products.
The study is interesting and comparable to a recent study. However, to improve the article further it is advisable for the authors to address the following points:
The Introduction needs to be improved: more research work in the last five years are require in the literature.
Please add a Conclusion section that summarizes your overall arguments and findings.
Author Response
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The Introduction needs to be improved: more research work in the last five years are require in the literature. |
It was amended. 4. Komonsing, N.; Reyer, S.; Khuwijitjaru, P.; Mahayothee, B.; Muller, J. Drying Behavior and Curcuminoids Changes in Turmeric Slices during Drying under Simulated Solar Radiation as Influenced by Different Transparent Cover Materials. Foods 2022, 11, doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11050696. 5. Ghnimi, T.; Hassini, L.; Bagane, M. Experimental study of water desorption isotherms and thin-layer convective drying kinetics of bay laurel leaves. Heat and Mass Transfer 2016, 52, 2649-2659, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-016-1770-0. 7. Sonmete, M.H.; Mengeş, H.O.; Ertekin, C.; Özcan, M.M. Mathematical modeling of thin layer drying of carrot slices by forced convection. Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization 2017, 11, 629-638, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11694-016-9432-y. 12. Dotto, G.L.; Meili, L.; Tanabe, E.H.; Chielle, D.P.; Moreira, M.F.P. Evaluation of the mass transfer process on thin layer drying of papaya seeds from the perspective of diffusive models. Heat and Mass Transfer 2018, 54, 463-471, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-017-2128-y.
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Please add a Conclusion section that summarizes your overall arguments and findings. |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added. 4. Discussion The long time stability of the drying process is given and the drying conditions show a stable behavior over the expected drying time. The flow rate can be controlled and kept stable during the drying process, although the porosity of the drying product changes during the drying time. Further research is needed to investigate the change of porosity during drying time. The results in the previous chapter indicate further agreement with published results [4,16,18-22]. The HPD TF3+ shows promising attributes which allows investigating the drying behavior of a wide range of technical, agricultural and food products and provides an optimal starting point for detailed research. To ensure high repeatability of the results produced with this dryer, the exact details of the research equipment are published in this paper. The CAD files, software and a list of parts of all relevant electrical components are provided to ensure that the system can be reproduced. To identify the optimal drying conditions of nettles (Urtica diocia L.) further research is planned and will be published. |
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors present a piece of work with plenty of workload. it is about the buidling up, setting and testing of a high precision laboratory dryer HPD TF3+ for characterization of they drying behavior of food products. Overall, the work quality is above average and of good novelty. the reviewer would recommend to consider accepting publishing it, only after the following minor spots are addressed properly.
1, the title can be improved. the acronym which is special, is recommended not to be used in a title.
2, line 34-35"the chemical composition and the physical properties, the dried products must be examined by various analyses" sounds a bit off the topic of the paper.
3, line 48, "measuring the drying behavior of single product layers" could you please explain what the brief definition of "layers" is? thanks.
4, line 141-142, what is the effect reflected by the set drying temperature?
5, line 174, the full name of MAPE should be given in the line 172, when for the first time, it is cited.
6, line 178, what is "safe detection"?
7, line 247, it seems the "increasing inaccuracy of the RH sensor at high temperature" should be considered and compensated in the design stage, or at least should be expected and the accuracy/deviation of the sensor should somehow be given in numbers to the readers. what is your opinion?
8, there is no "Conclusion" session of the manuscript. in the text, i think the authors mentioned that latter there will be conclusions drawn, but the reviewer cannot find it.
9, in general, please follow up the "IMRaD" structure more closely when organizing the story line of your manuscript.
Best regards,
Author Response
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1, the title can be improved. the acronym which is special, is recommended not to be used in a title. |
It was amended High precision laboratory dryer for characterization of the drying behavior of agricultural and food products |
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2, line 34-35"the chemical composition and the physical properties, the dried products must be examined by various analyses" sounds a bit off the topic of the paper. |
It was amended |
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3, line 48, "measuring the drying behavior of single product layers" could you please explain what the brief definition of "layers" is? thanks. |
A single layer of a product means, that all products are bedded side by side, like fish sticks at a baking tray. The high accuracy of the weight balances allows also this single layers of flowers like Calendula officinalis L. or Centaurea cyanus L. |
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4, line 141-142, what is the effect reflected by the set drying temperature? |
It was amended |
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5, line 174, the full name of MAPE should be given in the line 172, when for the first time, it is cited. |
It was amended |
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6, line 178, what is "safe detection"? |
It was amended As left boundary condition, the minimum detection velocity of the vane anemometer is plotted at v = 0.2 m·s-1. |
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7, line 247, it seems the "increasing inaccuracy of the RH sensor at high temperature" should be considered and compensated in the design stage, or at least should be expected and the accuracy/deviation of the sensor should somehow be given in numbers to the readers. what is your opinion? |
It was amended (line 83) The climate chamber is controlled by the actual value measured by a T and RH sensor (type HC2-IC402/CTS, Rotronic Messgeräte GmbH, Ettlingen, Germany) (3.1) that is placed between the precision drying unit and the flatbed drying unit to maintain setpoint conditions. The accurancy is given for humidity with ±0.8 %RH, at 10...30 °C and for temperature with ±0.1 °C, at 10...30 °C. |
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8, there is no "Conclusion" session of the manuscript. in the text, i think the authors mentioned that latter there will be conclusions drawn, but the reviewer cannot find it. |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added. 4. Discussion The long time stability of the drying process is given and the drying conditions show a stable behavior over the expected drying time. The flow rate can be controlled and kept stable during the drying process, although the porosity of the drying product changes during the drying time. Further research is needed to investigate the change of porosity during drying time. The results in the previous chapter indicate further agreement with published results [4,16,18-22]. The HPD TF3+ shows promising attributes which allows investigating the drying behavior of a wide range of technical, agricultural and food products and provides an optimal starting point for detailed research. To ensure high repeatability of the results produced with this dryer, the exact details of the research equipment are published in this paper. The CAD files, software and a list of parts of all relevant electrical components are provided to ensure that the system can be reproduced. To identify the optimal drying conditions of nettles (Urtica diocia L.) further research is planned and will be published. |
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9, in general, please follow up the "IMRaD" structure more closely when organizing the story line of your manuscript. |
It was amended |
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript deals with developing a drying system suitable for precisely measuring the drying behavior of food products. The text is well written, a lot of work has certainly been done, but the manuscript in this form does not correspond to the research article. I have comments mainly about the structure of the article.
The structure of the article should be modified. In the part Material and Methods, only an experimental setup is described, the methodology of how to achieve the results should be also described (e.g. section 3.1 corresponds to a methodology rather than a result, as well as some paragraphs below). A chapter Conclusion, which summarized the article, is missing.
It is not clear what the main results / outputs / conclusions of the article are.
Part of the discussion begins with a validation (line 219). But it is not clear what validation is it and why it is in the Discussion. In Discussion, I would expect a discussion of the results, for example, in comparison with other research on similar issues.
In Conclusion, there should be summarized the main results, what the novelty of this article is.
Although the authors have done a lot of work, the article in this form is not suitable for publication, I recommend to improve and resubmit the article.
Author Response
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The structure of the article should be modified. In the part Material and Methods, only an experimental setup is described, the methodology of how to achieve the results should be also described (e.g. section 3.1 corresponds to a methodology rather than a result, as well as some paragraphs below). A chapter Conclusion, which summarized the article, is missing. |
It was amended. The structure was changed. |
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It is not clear what the main results / outputs / conclusions of the article are. |
It was amended. The structure was changed. |
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Part of the discussion begins with a validation (line 219). But it is not clear what validation is it and why it is in the Discussion. In Discussion, I would expect a discussion of the results, for example, in comparison with other research on similar issues. |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added. 4. Discussion The long time stability of the drying process is given and the drying conditions show a stable behavior over the expected drying time. The flow rate can be controlled and kept stable during the drying process, although the porosity of the drying product changes during the drying time. Further research is needed to investigate the change of porosity during drying time. The results in the previous chapter indicate further agreement with published results [4,16,18-22]. The HPD TF3+ shows promising attributes which allows investigating the drying behavior of a wide range of technical, agricultural and food products and provides an optimal starting point for detailed research. To ensure high repeatability of the results produced with this dryer, the exact details of the research equipment are published in this paper. The CAD files, software and a list of parts of all relevant electrical components are provided to ensure that the system can be reproduced. To identify the optimal drying conditions of nettles (Urtica diocia L.) further research is planned and will be published. |
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In Conclusion, there should be summarized the main results, what the novelty of this article is. |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added. |
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Reviewer 4 Report
- In the introduction, I suggest referring to the available literature and considering the current technological innovations in drying in the paragraph.
- Please also pay attention to the quality state of the obtained dried fruit and vegetables. How important is it now to search for optimization methods for food preservation? Please correct it.
- The authors use alternate terms agricultural products and food products. Please harmonize these keywords. Correct it.
- I believe that the description of the diagram with the appropriate nomenclature should be placed in the heading Figure 1.
- In accordance with the principle of creating technical documentation for technical drawings, please include the description from Table 1 in Figure 1 Figure 2, respectively.
- The authors did not use the reference to Figure 3 in the text. Therefore, I suggest that you prepare a separate section in material and methods, briefly discussing the software used for the device. It is worth showing the Use Case diagram that describes the functionality of the software. Is this software proprietary? Maybe it would be worth showing the graphics of the apps as well.
- There is no discussion of the results. The authors described their results in detail, but there is no comparison with the available literature. There is no comparison to the devices made by authors already published in other journals. Please correct it.
- No conclusions. Please summarize the current proposed drying foods solution. Determine drying performance, drying economy and future direction of your research activities?
- In conclusion. Report the optimal results for research product validation considering temperature, velocity, and relative humidity.
- Line 133-135. It should be removed.
- As part of the validation process, it would be worth showing what the product looked like before and after drying. Especially because after drying, the leaves should be dark green with a clearly visible network of white veins. Brown leaves indicate that the herb has been dried for too long or under inappropriate conditions. Try to explain it in the discussion.
Author Response
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Point |
Response |
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In the introduction, I suggest referring to the available literature and considering the current technological innovations in drying in the paragraph. |
It was amended. 4. Komonsing, N.; Reyer, S.; Khuwijitjaru, P.; Mahayothee, B.; Muller, J. Drying Behavior and Curcuminoids Changes in Turmeric Slices during Drying under Simulated Solar Radiation as Influenced by Different Transparent Cover Materials. Foods 2022, 11, doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11050696. 5. Ghnimi, T.; Hassini, L.; Bagane, M. Experimental study of water desorption isotherms and thin-layer convective drying kinetics of bay laurel leaves. Heat and Mass Transfer 2016, 52, 2649-2659, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-016-1770-0. 7. Sonmete, M.H.; Mengeş, H.O.; Ertekin, C.; Özcan, M.M. Mathematical modeling of thin layer drying of carrot slices by forced convection. Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization 2017, 11, 629-638, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11694-016-9432-y. 12. Dotto, G.L.; Meili, L.; Tanabe, E.H.; Chielle, D.P.; Moreira, M.F.P. Evaluation of the mass transfer process on thin layer drying of papaya seeds from the perspective of diffusive models. Heat and Mass Transfer 2018, 54, 463-471, doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-017-2128-y.
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Please also pay attention to the quality state of the obtained dried fruit and vegetables. How important is it now to search for optimization methods for food preservation? Please correct it. |
It was amended |
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The authors use alternate terms agricultural products and food products. Please harmonize these keywords. Correct it. |
It was amended |
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I believe that the description of the diagram with the appropriate nomenclature should be placed in the heading Figure 1. |
The split design was chosen for better readability in the journal format. All technical CAD files are available in the source file repository. |
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In accordance with the principle of creating technical documentation for technical drawings, please include the description from Table 1 in Figure 1 Figure 2, respectively. |
The split design was chosen for better readability in the journal format. All technical CAD files are available in the source file repository. |
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The authors did not use the reference to Figure 3 in the text. Therefore, I suggest that you prepare a separate section in material and methods, briefly discussing the software used for the device. It is worth showing the Use Case diagram that describes the functionality of the software. Is this software proprietary? Maybe it would be worth showing the graphics of the apps as well. |
It was amended. The function is described in 2.2 |
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There is no discussion of the results. The authors described their results in detail, but there is no comparison with the available literature. There is no comparison to the devices made by authors already published in other journals. Please correct it. |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added.
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No conclusions. Please summarize the current proposed drying foods solution. Determine drying performance, drying economy and future direction of your research activities? |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added.
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In conclusion. Report the optimal results for research product validation considering temperature, velocity, and relative humidity. |
In this research the aim was to develop and produce a dryer for further research. The results show the performance of the dryer. To go more to detail for the optimal drying conditions, further publication are planed. |
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Line 133-135. It should be removed. |
It was amended |
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As part of the validation process, it would be worth showing what the product looked like before and after drying. Especially because after drying, the leaves should be dark green with a clearly visible network of white veins. Brown leaves indicate that the herb has been dried for too long or under inappropriate conditions. Try to explain it in the discussion. |
It was amended. The chapter “Discussion“ was added. 4. Discussion The long time stability of the drying process is given and the drying conditions show a stable behavior over the expected drying time. The flow rate can be controlled and kept stable during the drying process, although the porosity of the drying product changes during the drying time. Further research is needed to investigate the change of porosity during drying time. The results in the previous chapter indicate further agreement with published results [4,16,18-22]. The HPD TF3+ shows promising attributes which allows investigating the drying behavior of a wide range of technical, agricultural and food products and provides an optimal starting point for detailed research. To ensure high repeatability of the results produced with this dryer, the exact details of the research equipment are published in this paper. The CAD files, software and a list of parts of all relevant electrical components are provided to ensure that the system can be reproduced. To identify the optimal drying conditions of nettles (Urtica diocia L.) further research is planned and will be published. |
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The edits have improved the article, but I still have comments about the structure and content of the article.
“It is not clear what the main results / outputs / conclusions of the article are.” I did not find the answer to this comment. The content of the chapters: Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion should be derived from this.
The methodology has been supplemented, but a part of the result chapter has been moved to this chapter. In my opinion, the graphs would correspond to the result. There should be a procedure in the methodology. The resulting graphs, tables and values obtained after the application of the procedure represent the results.
Discussion and Conclusion are mixed. Please separated them.
The discussion of the results is very concise and nonspecific. Comparison with the published results should be added. Line 282, „…agreement with 282 published results [4,16,18-22]“. Could you specify in more detail the agreement with the published results in mentioned references?
There is still no Conclusion. In Conclusion, there should be summarized the main results, what the novelty of this article is. Now, this information is largely in the discussion section.
Author Response
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“It is not clear what the main results / outputs / conclusions of the article are.” I did not find the answer to this comment. The content of the chapters: Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion should be derived from this. |
We tried to make the objective of the work more clear in Introduction and improved the sections Discussion and Conclusions. The work is development-oriented rather than research-oriented. That is the reason why we chose the journal “Machines”. |
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The methodology has been supplemented, but a part of the result chapter has been moved to this chapter. In my opinion, the graphs would correspond to the result. There should be a procedure in the methodology. The resulting graphs, tables and values obtained after the application of the procedure represent the results. |
It was amended. We rearranged the manuscript |
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Discussion and Conclusion are mixed. Please separated them. |
It was amended. We have spitted Discussion and Conclusions |
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The discussion of the results is very concise and nonspecific. Comparison with the published results should be added. Line 282, „…agreement with 282 published results [4,16,18-22]“. Could you specify in more detail the agreement with the published results in mentioned references? |
It was amended. We have rewritten Discussion |
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There is still no Conclusion. In Conclusion, there should be summarized the main results, what the novelty of this article is. Now, this information is largely in the discussion section. |
It was amended We have rewritten Conclusions |
Reviewer 4 Report
- In the subject of work, the key words are dryer and food products. I didn't get enough answer in introduction. How does drying significantly affect food preservation? In the first paragraph, please describe about drying and how drying significantly affects the preservation of food, and then move on to the innovative solution proposed in the research.
- Still the authors have not considered the conclusion.Please add and concentrate on the actual conclusions of the research.Correct it.
- Line 221: What do the values mP1, mP2, mP3 mean, please remove subscript or correct abbreviations everywhere in the article.
- Line 282: In the discussion, the authors should clearly refer to the difference between their project made in the High precision laboratory dryer and the proposed solution such as HPD TF3 +. It is worth comparing these dryers with each other. Please add more information.
- In table 3 authors used the abbreviation F1. It is not in the text, please correct it.
Author Response
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In the subject of work, the key words are dryer and food products. I didn't get enough answer in introduction. How does drying significantly affect food preservation? In the first paragraph, please describe about drying and how drying significantly affects the preservation of food, and then move on to the innovative solution proposed in the research. |
It was amended. Information about drying has been added in Introduction |
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Still the authors have not considered the conclusion.Please add and concentrate on the actual conclusions of the research.Correct it. |
It was amended. We have rewritten Conclusions
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Line 221: What do the values mP1, mP2, mP3 mean, please remove subscript or correct abbreviations everywhere in the article. |
It was amended
Figure 6. Temperature and mass vs. time; room temperature Troom, temperature in balance unit Tbalance unit, sample mass of precision drying zone mP1, mP2, mP3 in the HPD TF3+ during calibration
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Line 282: In the discussion, the authors should clearly refer to the difference between their project made in the High precision laboratory dryer and the proposed solution such as HPD TF3 +. It is worth comparing these dryers with each other. Please add more information. |
It was amended. We have rewritten Conclusions |
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In table 3 authors used the abbreviation F1. It is not in the text, please correct it. |
It was amended
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