Impact of recipe design on kinects of heat pump drying of protein mixtures

Drying is important in the animal feed industry because the dried product has high quality and long shelf life. However, drying is energy intensive taking up to twenty percent of the energy used in the industrial sector. The drawbacks of the available conventional dryers are negative effect on dried product quality and loss in energy losses with detrimental impact on environment. Some of the current challenges in the pet food industry are developing mixtures that can be dried with acceptable quality. It is important to investigate alternatives to improve drying technologies for attaining higher water removal rates while being energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Experiments in a laboratory scale heat pump dryer were conducted using protein mixtures. This drying technology has been developed at NTNU and it is energy efficient and environmentally friendly. It has the added benefits of competitive costs while producing high quality dried protein mixtures. The influence of drying conditions, protein mixture and geometric parameters on quality, properties and drying kinetics were studied and discussed later on. A protein mixture and related parameters are proposed to achieve better drying kinetics, quality and energy use.Ingeniería Industria