Research Progress of Agricultural Drying Technology, Equipment Development and Recent Techniques

A Special Issue of AgriEngineering (ISSN 2624-7402).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2027 | Viewed by 1061

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Guest Editor
Agricultural Engineering, Soil and Water Sciences Department, Faculty of Technology and Development, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt
Interests: agricultural biosystems engineering; food processing engineering; renewable energy; mathematical modeling; Internet of Things; artificial intelligence

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Drying is always a topic of interest due to its importance. It refers to the process of removing moisture from products for preservation and quality maintenance using several different types. The application of scientific principles and engineering practices to design, develop, and optimize drying processes and equipment, in addition to product quality and energy efficiency, for development drying processes involves research and design, prototyping and testing, optimization and commercialization.

Different powerful tools are used to model and analyze drying processes such as artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, Internet of things (IoT) techniques, simulation, optimization, mathematical modeling (MM) used to describe and predict drying behavior for better results and production of smart dryers and cloud-based monitoring. Its challenges and future directions are with regard to data security, integration and scalability.  In addition, process efficiency can be enhanced by using hybrid systems, renewable energy sources and phase change materials (PCM) as well as studying life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental and economical and sustainability goals.  

Hybrid drying systems (HDS) combine multiple drying techniques to achieve improved efficiency, product quality, and energy savings. Its challenges and future directions are with regard to system design, control and automation and cost-effectiveness.

The Special Issue will feature all original research types on agricultural drying, which will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in the field of agriculture and related fields.

Dr. Khaled Abdel Salam El-Sayed Metwally
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • agricultural drying engineering and technology
  • drying kinetics
  • quality asessment
  • sensory evaluation
  • efficiencies and energies analysis
  • thermodynamic properties
  • renwable energy sources
  • hybrid dryer (HD)
  • phase change materials (PCM)
  • artifical intellgence (AI)
  • machine learning (ML)
  • deep learning (DL)
  • artificial neural network (ANN)
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • arduino and sensors
  • smart dryers (SD)
  • simulation
  • optimization
  • mathematical modeling (MM)
  • recent and advanced
  • algorithms and approaches
  • life cycle assement (LCA)
  • enviromental evaluation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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20 pages, 4242 KB  
Article
Drying Kinetics, Effective Moisture Diffusivity, and Thermodynamic Analysis of Banana Slices Under Potassium Metabisulfite (KMS) Pretreatment
by Kushal P. Dhake, Sanjay Kumar Jain, Pankaj B. Pathare and Sandip D. Patil
AgriEngineering 2026, 8(9), 378; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering8090378 - 7 Sep 2026
Viewed by 213
Abstract
The present study investigates the effect of drying temperature and potassium metabisulfite (KMS) pretreatment on the drying kinetics, effective moisture diffusivity, activation energy, thermodynamic properties, and thin-layer drying-model performance of green banana slices. Banana slices (4 ± 0.5 mm thickness) were subjected to [...] Read more.
The present study investigates the effect of drying temperature and potassium metabisulfite (KMS) pretreatment on the drying kinetics, effective moisture diffusivity, activation energy, thermodynamic properties, and thin-layer drying-model performance of green banana slices. Banana slices (4 ± 0.5 mm thickness) were subjected to KMS pretreatments at concentrations of 0 (control), 0.5%, 1.0%, and 1.5%, followed by drying in a convective tray dryer at 40, 50, 60, and 70 °C. The drying process exhibited a predominantly falling-rate period. Effective moisture diffusivity ranged from 2.04 × 10−10 to 4.35 × 10−10 m2/s and increased with drying temperature. Apparent activation energy decreased from 16.19 kJ/mol for the untreated control to 13.46 kJ/mol at 1.5% KMS. Thermodynamic analysis gave enthalpy values of 10.61–13.59 kJ/mol, entropy values of −209.15 to −219.72 J/mol·K, and Gibbs free energy values of 76.35–87.73 kJ/mol. The positive ΔG values indicate that moisture removal was non-spontaneous under the investigated conditions and required external thermal-energy input. Ten thin-layer models were evaluated using R2, RMSE, and χ2; the Midilli–Kucuk model gave the best overall fit within the investigated temperature and KMS ranges. Because endpoint moisture contents differed among treatments, drying-time comparisons were additionally standardised to an interpolated moisture content of 10% d.b. Full article
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