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Internet of things (IoT) results in massive amount of streaming data, often referred to as “big data”, which brings new opportunities to monitor agricultural and food processes. Besides sensors, big data from social media is also becoming important for the food industry. In this review we present an overview of IoT, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) and their disruptive role in shaping the future of agri-food systems. Following an introduction to the fields of IoT, big data, and AI, we discuss the role of IoT and big data analysis in agriculture (including greenhouse monitoring, intelligent farm machines, and drone-based crop imaging), supplychain modernization, social media (for open innovation and sentiment analysis) in food industry, food quality assessment (using spectral methods and sensor fusion), and finally, food safety (using gene sequencing and blockchain based digital traceability). A special emphasis is laid on the commercial status of applications and translational research outcomes.

Electrohydrodynamic drying (EHDD) is an energy-efficient and non-thermal technique for dehydrating heat-sensitive biological materials, like fruits, vegetables, or medicinal plants. Although this method has been studied for more than three decades, still little is known about the relative contribution of the different dehydration mechanisms in EHDD. An accurate understanding of the impact of the different EHD-driven mass transfer processes inside the food and its surrounding air is essential for a targeted future optimization and successful upscaling of EHDD technology. Examples of these dehydration mechanisms are convective moisture removal, electroporation of the cell membrane, or electro-osmotic flow in the fruit. In this modeling study, we first identify possible dehydration mechanisms for mass transfer during the EHDD process of plant-based food materials. Using available theoretical models, we then estimate the relative contribution of each dehydration mechanism to the overall mass transfer during the constant rate period and rank them based on their contribution. We show that convective dehydration by ionic wind is the dominant dehydration mechanism, with a contribution of about 93% to the overall water flux for a capillary-porous material. Cell-membrane electroporation is the second important driving force that increases the contribution of the transmembrane water flow to about 6.5% of the total mass flux in fruit tissue. The contribution of all the other water transport mechanisms is only 0.5%. These insights provide a stepping stone towards developing a full physics-based model of the dehydration process by EHD, including the falling rate period., Food and Bioproducts Processing, 131, ISSN:0960-3085, ISSN:1744-3571

Drying processes reduce the amount of available essential nutrients in dried plant-based foods to a large extent compared to fresh produce. This reduction is much larger than the differences in the final quality of products dried using various processing parameters and, in most cases, different drying methods. This aspect is, however, rarely highlighted. Here, the extent to which different convective drying methods reduce the nutritional content, namely vitamin C, carotenoids and phenolic content of dried fruits and vegetables, compared to fresh produce was quantified using literature data. The impact of different drying process parameters, such as air temperature, airspeed and relative humidity on the nutritional content of fruits and vegetables were compared. Results revealed that convective drying reduced the amount of vitamin C, carotenoids and the phenolic content of dried fruits and vegetables by up to 70%. The reduction in the residual vitamin C and carotenoid content of dried fruits and vegetables due to differences in air temperature (∼40%), airspeed (∼20%), and relative humidity (∼20%) is much less than the nutritional quality losses due to the drying process. The residual vitamin C, carotenoids and phenolic contents in convective-dried fruits and vegetables are ∼30% less than those in freeze-dried products. This study confirms that little absolute gains in nutritional quality can be achieved by opting for either an alternative drying method or optimizing processing parameters since the drying process already results in a low nutritional quality of dried products. As such, the remaining micronutrient concentration of dried products should not necessarily be a decisive criterion in selecting the most appropriate drying method or processing parameters for fruits and vegetables. Instead, other key performance indicators such as the drying time, energy consumption, or sensory properties such as color, texture, and rehydration capacity could eventually have a greater influence on the decision-making process., Food and Bioproducts Processing, 131, ISSN:0960-3085, ISSN:1744-3571

Due to its non-thermal nature, electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying of foods is considered extremely energy-efficient electrotechnology. Reported experimental results show that energy consumption in the EHD drying depends on multiple factors such as the applied voltage and discharge current, design and geometry of electrodes, environmental conditions, and drying material properties. Unfortunately, the systematic overview of experimental findings related to energy consumption and energy efficiency of EHD drying is still missing. This current review is focused on the energy aspects of EHD drying of foods to provide a roadmap for industrial-scale applications. The challenges associated with the industrial scaling of this novel technology and future directions of research are identified and discussed.

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is considered a highly efficient technology due to its ability to create powerful convective airflow with low energy consumption. EHD efficiency depends on multiple...

Food quality is a fuzzy category, which could be evaluated using fuzzy logic. Our approach to food quality evaluation is based on mapping food quality attributes into a fuzzy domain as a multi-dime...

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a novel nonthermal technique using cold plasma in high electric field for dewatering of heat-sensitive foods. It is highly acclaimed for energy efficiency, envir...

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a novel technology, which appears to be beneficial for drying of heat-sensitive biomaterials with high moisture contents. Although numerous publications on EHD drying of fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based foods report high energy efficiency and superior product quality, the technology is still not commercialized. One of the reasons is incomplete information in published studies on the design of EHD dryers, including electrode geometry, dried materials, and experimental conditions, which hinder the comparison of experimental findings. Another reason is the gap in the knowledge about the actual mechanisms behind the EHD drying, including convective moisture removal by airflow and diffusive moisture transport inside the food. In this review, key findings in published reports on plant-based foods and food model systems have been critically analyzed and generalized using the same uniform metrics. The limiting factors, most favorable conditions, and future perspectives of EHD drying for plant-based foods are discussed.

Cannabis is an important source of several bio molecules that possess medical applications. With the growing interest in cannabis processing in Canada, there is a need for innovation in this sector...

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a novel non-thermal drying method to dry heat-sensitive foods faster and with lower energy. Upscaling EHD drying to dry large amounts of food is the current challenge of this technology. In this regard, we quantify how successful a newly-proposed electrode configuration for EHD dryers is for drying commercial amounts of fruit for a wide range of operating conditions. To achieve this goal, we simulate an EHD dryer using physics-based modeling. The scalability was evaluated by quantifying the impact of fruit loading density in the dryer, applied voltage, and distance between electrodes on the drying time and energy consumption. Drying fruits in a commercial EHD dryer is more optimal when the dryer is densely loaded, compared to a low loading density. Loading the trays in the dryer to a capacity of 70% increased the drying time by 16%, compared to drying a few fruits widely spaced apart, but the energy consumption was 28% less. We identified the best strategy to dry a particular batch of fruit with EHD drying to achieve the fastest drying with the least energy possible. We found that it is most energy-efficient and quick to load the dryer close to its full capacity, instead of drying smaller batches in many different runs. By loading the trays in the dryer to 70% of their capacity, we could dry 7 times faster and with 11 times less energy in a single drying run instead of drying the same amount of fruit by many different runs. This study presents a key step towards upscaling EHD drying systems for the industry to dry large amounts of fruits in the shortest possible time and more energy-efficiently., Journal of Cleaner Production, 329, ISSN:0959-6526

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a promising technology to better preserve the nutritional content and sensory appeal of dried fruits and vegetables. To successfully scale up this technology, we need to rethink the current EHD dryer designs. There is also a significant potential to further enhance the nutritional content and sensory quality of the dried products by optimizing EHD process parameters. This study particularly highlights the current bottlenecks in scaling up the technology and improving nutrient retention and sensory appeal of the dried products. We discuss plausible future pathways to further develop the technology to produce highly nutritious dried products. Particular emphasis has been given to quantifying the residual nutritional and sensory properties of EHD dried products, and possible EHD dryer configurations for farmers and the industry. Concerning the nutritional content, EHD drying preserves vitamins, carotenes, and antioxidants significantly better than convective air drying. From the sensory perspective, EHD drying enhances the color of dried products, as well as their general appearance. With respect to scalability, placing the fruit on a grounded mesh electrode dries the fruit much faster and more uniformly than the grounded plate electrode. Future research should be directed toward simultaneous measurements of multiple food nutrients and sensory properties during EHD drying with a grounded mesh collector. Quantifying the impact of the food loading density on drying kinetics and energy consumption of the EHD drying process should also be a future research goal. Research comparing EHD drying with commercially available drying methods such as freeze-drying, microwave-drying, and infrared drying should also be carried out. This study gives promising insight toward developing a scalable novel thermal drying technology tailored to the requirements of the current and future society., Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 20 (5), ISSN:1541-4337

Although very important for analysis of drying processes, physics-based models are limited in terms of their prediction ability and in most cases are unsuitable for real-time process control and op...

The theoretical background for electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying, linking mass transfer to electric field strength and charge transfer, has been proposed. The relationship between drying rat...

This paper presents the results of experimental study and mathematical simulation of multi-pin electrohydrodynamic dryer as a function of emitters’ density and a gap between discharge and c...

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a promising, non-thermal drying technology, based on ionic wind generation between an emitter and a collector electrode. This simulation-based study evaluates impact of various emitter-collector configurations for EHD drying in order to assess their potential towards industrial upscaling. The conventional wire-to-plate configuration, which creates impinging flow, is found not to be an optimal solution for EHD drying of multiple food products in a fast and uniform way. With a single wire (emitter), it is found that the products placed more downstream dry slower due to the progressive loading of the air with water vapor. With multiple emitters, up to a threefold increase in drying time of the food products is found, compared to a single wire. This increase is caused by the recirculation of most air. To avoid water vapor accumulation in the drying zone, a wire-to-mesh configuration is proposed. The mesh collector minimizes interference of neighboring airflows and avoids recirculation of moist air in the drying zone. As such, the wire-to mesh configuration provides more uniform drying between adjacent products, but also within a product, as it can dry from all its surfaces. An increase in emitter density for the wire-to-mesh configuration leads to an overall increase in air speed, but, surprisingly, not to increased product drying rates. The reason is that the high-speed EHD airflow is always generated very locally in the vicinity of the emitter and collector. Thereby the convective drying process is not affected so much by the emitter density.

The size distribution of bubbles in cake batters is often determined from optical microscopic imaging, considering the lesser availability and non-affordability of sophisticated techniques such as light scattering, and acoustic methods. We present an automated bubble detection and counting method from microscopic images that presents flexibility and robustness over existing manual approaches. The method is able to successfully resolve connected bubbles and recognise far many bubbles in an image than would be possible by naked eye or hitherto reported methods in chemical and food engineering literature. Furthermore, the size data obtained for the bubbles can easily be used for routine statistical analysis. We demonstrate the application of our method for studying the influence of two different mixer geometries and three different speeds on bubble size.

Automated classification of seed varieties is of paramount importance for seed producers to maintain the purity of a variety and crop yield. Traditional approaches based on computer vision and simple feature extraction could not guarantee high accuracy classification. This paper presents a new approach using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) as a generic feature extractor. The extracted features were classified with artificial neural network (ANN), cubic support vector machine (SVM), quadratic SVM, weighted k-nearest-neighbour (kNN), boosted tree, bagged tree, and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Models trained with CNN-extracted features demonstrated better classification accuracy of corn seed varieties than models based on only simple features. The CNN-ANN classifier showed the best performance, classifying 2250 test instances in 26.8 s with classification accuracy 98.1%, precision 98.2%, recall98.1%, and F1-score 98.1%. This study demonstrates that the CNN-ANN classifier is an efficient tool for the intelligent classification of different corn seed varieties.

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a non-thermal technology with promising perspectives to dehydrate heat-sensitive materials such as foods. With EHD drying, corona discharge is used to generate airflow, which enhances convective drying of the food product. Further development and upscaling of this technology are hindered by a lack of insight in both the airflow and the dehydration process inside the material during drying. This study is the first to develop a conjugate continuum model which couples EHD-generated airflow directly to the convective heat transfer and moisture removal from the food. For the wire-to-plate configuration with impinging flow, the impact of different geometrical and operational parameters (wire radius, distance to collector electrode, emitter voltage) on the EHD-driven airflow and resulting drying kinetics is quantified. The fruit drying time is found to increase linearly with increasing distance between electrodes or increasing emitter electrode radius, but decreases in a non-linear way with increasing voltage between the electrodes. For other emitter-collector configurations, where airflow passes around the fruit, such as wire-to-mesh, wire-to-plate, wire-to-wires and wire-to-parallel plates, significant differences in drying kinetics were quantified. Such configurations provide better perspectives towards upscaling to dry large amounts of products uniformly. Of all tested configurations, the wire-to-mesh configuration provided the highest drying rate. Placing the fruit on a mesh also showed to be advantageous since the fruit can be dried more uniformly. The developed conjugate approach has the distinct advantage that the impact of EHD process parameters and geometrical configurations on the drying rate can be quantified very swiftly. Such modeling approach is thereby a valuable tool for further optimization of EHD drying technology towards industrial implementation.

Intermittent drying is a common technique for food conservation. The objective of this work is to evaluate the effect of non-isothermal drying and the wave periods using the effective diffusivity (Deff), the glass transition temperature (Tg), their relationship to moisture content and the temperature of the product, as parameters for controlling quality deterioration. The heating–cooling profile was developed as a trapezoidal wave form using three different wave periods (τ:60, 120 and 160 min), with a midpoint temperature (Tm) of 50 °C and ∆T = 10 °C. The ascending (AC) heating–cooling treatment began at 40 °C, and the descending (DC) heating–cooling treatment began at 60 °C. The drying temperature (Ta), the surface temperature of the garlic (Ts), the internal temperature of the garlic (Ti), and the weight of the garlic slices were measured and recorded in real time. The Deff was calculated using the slope method. A higher drying rate was observed in the AC drying treatment. The Tg variations were associated with the Ti and moisture content of the garlic. The drying time (ts) for the AC and the DC heating–cooling profiles was found to be between 180 to 238 min.

Blueberry puree was developed using hydrodynamic cavitation technology. The product was made from entire blueberries without adding any food additives. In this study, microbial reduction following each processing stage (at the industry setting) and after product pasteurization at 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, and 96 °C was investigated. Microbial quality including total plate counts, yeast and molds, and heat‐resistant molds counts was determined. Shelf life of pasteurized products stored for up to 24 weeks at room temperature were assessed for microbial quality, soluble solids (°Brix), titratable acidity (citric acid %), pH, viscosity (cP) and flow rate (cm/30 s). Our results indicated that heat‐resistant molds, initially present in frozen blueberries with counts at 2.03 log CFU/200g, were totally inactivated at 94 to 96 °C with 1 to 2 min holding time. Shelf life study showed that no product spoilage was caused by bacteria, yeasts and heat‐resistant molds along with non‐significant changes of textural characteristics. This study provided useful information for the food industry to develop variety of fruit puree products with no wastes of fruit materials. This study provides useful information for the food industry to develop safe liquid food products using cavitation technology without wasting any raw materials.

The effect of drying temperature and air velocity on apple quality parameters, such as color difference (CD), volume ratio (VR) and water absorption capacity (WAC) in convective drying was experimentally studied. Optimization of drying conditions was carried out in the range of air temperatures from 50 to 70 °C and air velocity from 0.01 to 6 m s−1. A novel algorithm of multi-objective optimization, based on artificial neural network (ANN), genetic algorithm (GA) and Pareto optimization was developed. Three optimization objectives included simultaneous minimization of CD, maximization of VR and maximization of WAC. Objective functions for CD, VR and WAC were developed by using ANN training on the experimental dataset of apple drying at 50, 60 and 70 °C. Pareto optimal set was developed with elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA II). Unique Pareto optimal solution within specified constraints was found at air temperature 65 °C and velocity 1 m s−1. This mode of apple drying resulted in CD = 5.24, VR = 49.66% and WAC = 0.488. Experimental verification showed that maximum error of modelling did not exceed 3.24%.

The effects of novel Pulse-Spouted Bed Microwave Freeze Drying (PSMFD) technology on the quality on natural food products have been investigated. The objective of this research was to study effects of this novel technology on dielectric properties and quality characteristics (moisture content, porosity, microstructure, texture, color, and flavor) of apple cuboids as compared with the conventional drying technologies (air drying and freeze drying). During the first 45 min of drying, the dielectric properties increased due to partial conversion of water from ice to liquid, and then gradually decreased due to the moisture removal. Microwave energy increased sample temperature from minus 20 °C to + 67 °C, which resulted in fast drying to 0.09 g/g within 270 min. Porosity increased almost linearly, reaching 0.87 at equilibrium moisture content. Hardness of apple cuboids increased to 350–450 kPa due to the glass transition in the final period of drying. Better preservation of apple color and volatile compounds demonstrated the benefits of the hybrid PSMFD technology for the production of premium quality dried fruits compared to air drying and freeze drying.

The effects of two-stage fruit processing on the quality of natural blueberry leather are reported. Different combinations of pureeing methods, including hydrothermodynamic vs. conventional blending and drying technologies, including freeze, forced-air and electrohydrodynamic drying, were studied. At the first stage, hydrothermodynamic processing provided better quality compared to conventional blending due to full enzymes inactivation and less degradation of bioactive compounds. This was beneficial for the next stage of drying, where hydrothermodynamic processed puree did not degrade under forced-air drying below 65 °C, while conventional blended puree demonstrated rapid degradation of anthocyanin (23% loss) and formation of polymeric colour (20%). Electrohydrodynamic drying showed partial inactivation of enzymes, but negatively affected leather quality (15.6–20.6% loss of anthocyanin, 17.3–27.9% loss of polyphenols), which may be due to oxidation by ozone, generated in corona discharge. The current study suggested hydrothermodynamic pureeing for inactivation of enzymes and forced-air drying at 65 °C for maximum preservation of nutritional quality.

In this work, we explored the effect of AC corona discharge on water evaporation in a strong electric field by using a multipin-dielectric-plate EHD system. Our experiments demonstrated that the AC corona discharge could produce a significant amount of heat because of the Joule and dielectric heating of the dielectric barrier. When the electric field strength was below the ionization point and current density did not exceed 1 mA/m2, the heating was not substantial. At the initial stage of corona discharge with the current density below 10 mA/m2, the cooling effect of evaporation compensated the Joule heating of the dielectric barrier, keeping wet material surface below wet-bulb temperature. With a current density above 10 mA/m2, the AC heating effect became dominant. At 40 kV applied voltage and current density of 38 mA/m2, the temperature of the dielectric increased from 22 °C to 25 °C and the material surface reached wet-bulb temperature. A theoretical model of the relationship between material temperature, electric field strength, discharge current and drying rate in EHD drying was developed and experimentally verified.

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is a novel drying technology suitable for food materials with high moisture content. This research focuses on the design of multiple-emitter discharge electrodes by optimizing emitters' type and arrangement. Four types of emitters with different tip angles and two arrangements (square or chess grid) have been tested. Imaging of ionic wind distribution revealed that emitters made of construction nails and thin pins created the most diffuse ionization field and uniform exposure of material surface, which resulted in the best discharge stability. A multiple-emitter discharge electrode's drying efficiency was evaluated by drying rate and specific energy consumption (SEC). The smallest SEC of 107.19 kJ/kg was for the nail electrode with the square arrangement of emitters at 3.5 kV/cm electric field strength and a 2 cm gap between discharge and collecting electrodes. An increase of the electric field strength or the gap led to increased drying rate and SEC. The chess arrangement did not affect SEC but significantly reduced the drying rate. The results of this research are critical for the industrial scaling of EHD drying.

The enhancement of drying rate of a model food (agar gel) by electrohydrodynamic effect in cold plasma from a dielectric barrier discharge has been experimentally studied for the first time. The barrier discharge allowed to apply electric fields of significantly higher strengths compared to hitherto studies. Three different electrode configurations namely, plate-plate, closed multipin-plate, and multipin-plate with openings were evaluated. The results indicated that the major factor governing drying was electric field strength.

A theoretical approach to quantify the electric field intensity, space charge density and mass transport in a multiple pin-plate electrohydrodynamic dryer has been developed. It was found that: (i) the corona onset voltage depends largely on the electrode geometry, decreasing for smaller gaps and larger spacing between pins, (ii) the charge flow rate (convection current) depends on voltage, gap and electrode geometry, and (iii) airflow mass flux generated by multiple-pin electrode is proportional to the voltage and square root of electric current. The theoretical model of electrically-induced airflow predicts velocity profile and occurrence of aerodynamic vortices in a single channel of flowing air. The model has been experimentally validated in drying experiments with wet paper tissue. Drying with 2 × 2 cm electrode showed good correlation between model-predicted air mass flux and water transport from the wet material. Smaller spacing between pins (1 × 1 cm) significantly affected charge distribution, aerodynamics of airflow and mass transfer.

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) drying is considered as energy efficient non-thermal technology suitable for dewatering of heat-sensitive materials, including food products. A factorial experimental design was used to identify significant factors affecting mass transfer in EHD drying. The experiment revealed significant effects of voltage, distance (gap) between electrodes, configuration of discharge electrode, air cross-flow and the characteristics of material surface on mass transfer. Strong coupling between mass and charge transfer was found for all voltages, gaps and configurations of discharge electrode. The effect of air cross-flow at 1.0 m/s on mass transfer was additive to the effect of ionic wind, consistently increasing total mass transfer by 5.0–5.1 g/h in all experimental conditions. These results led to the conclusion that the effect of EHD is convective in nature, enhancing mass transfer due to ionic wind. The effect of material surface characteristics was attributed to different hydrodynamic conditions of air boundary layer. Industrial relevance This research is focused on better understanding of the factors that play a significant role in EHD drying, and therefore it is important for industry to facilitate practical applications of EHD in bioprocessing and food engineering.

Electrohydrodynamic drying (EHD) is a promising technology to dehydrate biomaterials but needs further development for industrial use. Open questions in our understanding of EHD drying are discussed. These include the phenomena driving the EHD drying process, possible dryer configurations for industrial upscaling, and the specific energy consumption of corona discharge and peripheral equipment. Future opportunities for experimental and numerical analysis of EHD drying are also highlighted, including particle image velocimetry and X-ray/neutron tomography. Numerical modeling of EHD airflow and the associated vapor transport, coupled with the transfer processes within the drying material, are considered essential for further process optimization.

Interest in the development and adoption of nonthermal technologies is burgeoning within the food and bioprocess industry, the associated research community, and among the consumers. This is evident from not only the success of some innovative nonthermal technologies at industrial scale, but also from the increasing number of publications dealing with these topics, a growing demand for foods processed by nonthermal technologies and use of natural ingredients. A notable feature of the nonthermal technologies such as cold plasma, electrohydrodynamic processing, pulsed electric fields, and ultrasound is the involvement of external fields, either electric or sound. Therefore, it merits to study the fundamentals of these technologies and the associated phenomenon with a unified approach. In this review, we revisit the fundamental physical and chemical phenomena governing the selected technologies, highlight similarities, and contrasts, describe few successful applications, and finally, identify the gaps in research.

Storage stability of cranberry purees, processed with hydrothermodynamic (HTD) technology was studied for a period of 285 days. Three different formulations of cranberry puree were investigated: pure cranberry (PC); cranberry processed with natural sweetener (SC); and cranberry processed with natural sweetener and diluted with water (SCW). No significant difference in pH and soluble solid content (Brix) of all samples during storage was observed. The degradation kinetics of the bioactive compounds followed first-order reactions. Compared with other bioactive compounds, anthocyanins were the most stable at a 4 °C storage temperature with t1/2 from 248 to 330 days depending on the puree formulation. At room temperature, the stability of anthocyanins was significantly smaller than that of PACs and polyphenols. Addition of natural sweetener reduced the storage stability of most bioactive compounds. Colour of processed cranberry puree significantly degraded with time, temperature and addition of sweetener. The study suggested refrigerator storage of HTD processed cranberry products in order to increase their storage stability and shelf-life.

Computer Vision System (CVS) was enhanced by incorporating Fuzzy approach.Genetic Algorithm was employed to optimize the Fuzzy-machine vision control system.Performance evaluation of the controller was carried out for kiwifruit drying.The method could well compromise between energy consumption and product quality. In this study, an intelligent fuzzy-machine vision control system (FMCS) was developed to control the operating variables throughout a hybrid hot air-infrared drying process. The total discoloration and the shrinkage of thin layer kiwifruit slices were monitored in real time using a computer vision system (CVS). These values along with calculated energy consumption obtained from preliminary experiments, were fed into a genetic algorithm (GA) framework to optimize a fuzzy logic control system. The performance of the fuzzy controller was evaluated for kiwifruit drying using a laboratory-scale hot air-infrared dryer. The results indicated that the hybrid drying could significantly reduce the drying load/time compared with the hot air drying. The FMCS application showed a good balance between energy consumption (0.158kWh) and product quality (E=2.32).

The range of applications of computer vision for product inspection, monitoring, and control in drying in both offline and online modes are reviewed. The basics of computer vision, image acquisition, processing, pattern recognition, and learning are discussed. General approach to interpretation of computer vision data, relevant to drying process, is proposed. Examples of process control, based on computer vision as “intelligent” observer, are provided. Real-time imaging, data processing, and analysis make computer vision an excellent tool for feedback control of drying.