Exergex Corporation, Montreal, Canada

187 pages, 2000

Reviewed by

Departamento de Engenharia Quimica, Escola de Engenharia da UFMG

Rua Espirito Santo, 35-60 andar, 30.160-030-Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil

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This book is truly unique in many ways. It is a result of the demand from industrial and academic audiences around the world for the lecture notes Dr. Mujumdar prepared for many professional development courses he gave around the world as well as the innumerable Plenary and Keynote lectures he has presented at international and national conferences on drying as well as chemical and food engineering. He has revised, updated and reformatted many of these texts and S. Devahastin (Editorial Assistant of Drying Technology - An International Journal) carefully edited them in the form of a neat hardcover book - the result is this concise book packed with valuable information about the state-of-the-art of drying technologies in an easy-to-reach format for students, instructors, designers as well as users of dryers and even vendors of drying equipment who are generally familiar with only specific dryers and not the competing dryers.

The contents give a good picture of what the reader will find in the book. An astute reader will find literally hundreds of ideas - some not very obvious - for R&D and for incorporation into existing drying technologies. Dryer vendors and designers will get a quick overview about what their competition is doing. They can respond well to their potential customer's concerns about their dryers and why they should not choose their competitor's dryers that claim to do the same things and even better or more cost-effectively. More and more buyers of dryers are increasingly sophisticated and know a lot about different dryers. It is known that a convective dryer costs only about 15% in capital cost over its lifetime while the buyer has to cover over 70% for energy costs alone! The buyer has much at stake and hence does the homework for it. The vendors must know a lot more about other dryers, as a result.

This guide is a good bridge between the massive Handbook of Industrial Drying and various texts on drying. If you think you are short of time and want a quick but authoritative overview of topics in the Contents, then this book is your solution. It is very inexpensive and for multiple orders it is extremely inexpensive. It also includes a summary of Prof. Mujumdar's major contributions to many areas of drying and heat transfer. Some readers will like the easy access it provides to hard-to-find references.

Contents: Fundamental principles of drying; Classification and selection of dryers; Dryers for particulate solids, slurries and sheet-form materials; Dryers for production of particulate solids; Fluidized bed drying technology; Innovation in drying techniques; Superheated steam drying – Technology of the future; Global drying research and development; Some thoughts on R&D, creativity and need for industry-university interaction; appendices.