Amir Malvandi

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | UIUC · Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Approximately 12% of the total energy consumed in manufacturing is used for industrial drying. It is estimated that roughly 40% of this amount can be reduced by more efficient process controls and developing new drying technologies. Different technologies have different operating conditions where they perform the best. Therefore, one way to reduce...

DDG is a major source of protein, calcium, phosphorus, and sulfur is arguably the most important byproduct of the bioethanol industry with increasing demand over the past few years. Reducing energy consumption in the DDG production process and energy recovery from DDG is vital for sustainable bioethanol productions. In this paper, a novel direct-co...

Portable near-infrared spectrometer in the spectral range of 900-1700 nm was evaluated for the first time to assess and monitor apple hardness in real-time during ultrasonic drying. Calibration models were developed using PLS and ANN, and their performances were evaluated by internal leave-one-out cross-validation and an external dataset. Several p...

Direct-contact ultrasonic drying is a novel approach to dehydrate fruits and vegetables to reduce microbial growth and post-harvest loss while preserving nutrients and the quality of the final product. Moisture content is a critical component for food behavior during drying, and its accurate evaluation in real-time is essential for food quality con...

Drying is one of the most prevalent methods to reduce water activity and preserve foods. However, it is also the most energy-intensive food processing unit operation. Although a number of drying methods have been proposed and tested for the purpose of achieving a time- and energy-efficient drying process, almost all current drying methods still rel...