Food and Other Industrial Drying Systems

Our Drying Systems use our heat pump technology to dry any product that is ideally dried between 40°F and 200°F (4°C and 93°C). The systems allow you to closely control the drying process, increasing product quality and they will drastically reduce energy costs for drying a wide variety of products.

Conventional systems bring in air from outside the process, heat it to the process temperature and use it to evaporate the water from the product. The air and water are then exhausted to the atmosphere. As a result, the energy used to evaporate the water and heat the air that carries the water is all lost to the atmosphere.

Instead, our Heat Pump systems circulate the air over the cold coil of a refrigeration system, condensing the water vapor back to water. This recovers the energy from vaporization and eliminates venting the air. The result is that energy requirements can be reduced up to 60%. Undesired emissions of chemicals released in many drying processes are reduced by 80%-100% and CO2 emissions by approximately 60%.

These systems are used for drying food products such as fruit, vegetables, fish, croutons and other products. They are also used for drying products such as leather and paint where high temperature drying might affect color and appearance. They are ideal for use when the process includes some chemicals that would be better condensed than exhausted into the atmosphere.

Energy Recovery

Occasionally, it is not practical to convert drying systems to complete recycled dehumidification systems because the existing dryers may not easily lend themselves to that. In those cases, our heat pumps are best used to recover the heat from the exhausted air. Recovery rates are high and unlike traditional heat recovery systems, the heat can be delivered to the process at higher temperature than the exhaust air stream.