The structural heterogeneities of fruits and vegetables intensify the complexity to comprehend the interrelated physicochemical changes that occur during drying. Shrinkage of food materials during drying is a common physical phenomenon which affects the textural quality and taste of the dried product. The shrinkage of food material depends on many factors including material characteristics, microstructure, mechanical properties, and process conditions. Understanding the effect of these influencing factors on deformation of fruits and vegetables during drying is crucial to obtain better-quality product. The majority of the previous studies regarding shrinkage are either experimental or empirical; however, such studies cannot provide a realistic understanding of the physical phenomena behind the material shrinkage. In contrast, theoretical modeling can provide better insights into the shrinkage that accompanies simultaneous heat and mass transfer during drying. However, limited studies have been conducted on the theoretical modeling of shrinkage of fruits and vegetables. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to critically review the existing theoretical shrinkage models and present a framework for a theoretical model for the shrinkage mechanism. This paper also describes the effect of different drying conditions on material shrinkage. Discussions on how the diverse characteristics of fruits and vegetables affect shrinkage propagation is presented. Moreover, a comprehensive review of formulation techniques of shrinking models and their results are also presented. Finally, the challenges in developing a physics-based shrinkage model are discussed.

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In most drying processes, several physical, chemical and nutritional modifications take place in food products. Innovative drying techniques such as intermittent drying can enhance the quality of dehydrated products effectively and efficiently. Intermittent drying is a technique where drying conditions are changed through varying the drying air temperature, humidity, velocity, pressure, or even mode of heat input. This drying technique has been successfully applied to overcome the problems of conventional drying systems such as longer time consumption, case hardening, lower energy efficiency and poor-quality attributes. However, as the effect of intermittent drying on food quality is not yet well understood, a comprehensive study of quality change during intermittent drying is crucial. The main aim of this paper is to present a thorough review of the potential effect of intermittent drying methods on physical, chemical, nutritional, and stability characteristics of plant-based food material. It is found that application of intermittency using different drying systems has a significant effect on product quality and its stability. In addition, a comprehensive review on existing models of physio/biochemical kinetics for food drying is presented. Finally, the paper is concluded with the discussion of the current challenges and future directions of intermittent drying for producing high-quality dried food products.

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Nanofluids have great potential in a wide range of fields including solar thermal applications, where molten salt nanofluids have shown great potential as a heat transfer fluid (HTF) for use in high temperature solar applications. However, no study has investigated the use of molten salt nanofluids as the HTF in direct absorption solar collector systems (DAC). In this study, a two dimensional CFD model of a direct absorption high temperature molten salt nanofluid concentrating solar receiver has been developed to investigate the effects design and operating variables on receiver performance. It has been found that the Carnot efficiency increases with increasing receiver length, solar concentration, increasing height and decreasing inlet velocity. When coupled to a power generation cycle, it is predicted that total system efficiency can exceed 40% when solar concentrations are greater than 100×. To impart more emphasis on the temperature rise of the receiver, an adjusted Carnot efficiency has been used in conjunction with the upper temperature limit of the nanofluid. The adjusted total efficiency also resulted in a peak efficiency for solar concentration, which decreased with decreasing volume fraction, implying that each receiver configuration has an optimal solar concentration.

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