Book Review

Abstract

Industrial Heat Pump-Assisted Wood Drying by Vasile Minea is a complete guidebook on the application of heat pump-assisted dryer in lumber drying, covering various aspects ranging from fundamental knowledge on wood properties and mechanism of wood drying (Chapters 1 to 8) to advancement of heat pump-assisted drying technologies (Chapters 9 to 17). Wood drying is a complex operation as it involves complex transient heat and mass transfer in porous material. It is challenging to minimize development of defects, while maintaining low and uniform moisture content in a final product for further processing and applications; not to mention the long drying time as well as intensive energy consumption. Coupling of a heat pump system to a dryer would further increase the complexity in wood drying as both are complex thermodynamic systems. Interdependence of many thermodynamic relations are relied on the interaction between the air-drying process and the heat pump (refrigerant) thermodynamic cycle. Hence, appropriate design, sizing, and configuration of a heat pump coupling dryer are the crucial keys to make it reliable and efficient. This book provides comprehensive information pertaining to basic heat pump design and sizing rules (Chapter 9), heat pump cycle and its performance indicators (Chapter 10), refrigerant selection (Chapter 11), heat exchanger design (Chapter 12), moisture condenser construction guide (Chapter 13), refrigerant-to-air condenser design (Chapter 14) and last but not least modeling and simulation (Chapter 15). There are numerous available publications reporting the astonishing impact of heat pump-assisted drying on product quality such as the final structure, color, nutrition, etc., yet without details on the design and specification of the heat pump components. This is a scarce book to find explicit information on the heat pump critical operating parameters, components coupling configurations, control strategies, system modeling and simulation that can be employed to improve the energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of heat pump-assisted drying. The practical schematic diagrams, applied equations and solved examples of calculation would definitely help new user or early researcher to understand the fundamental principles and theories of heat pump-assisted dryer, whilst critical review on the existing heat pumpassisted dryer designs, constructive discussion on the R&D challenges and evaluation on the modern aspects of industrial heat pump-assisted wood drying technology would benefit the current user or researcher. The book is highly recommended to the users from industrial and academia who need a one-stop solution for their enquiries on heat pump-assisted dryer either in wood drying or other agricultural and biological materials drying. This book is part of the recent book series entitled Advances in Drying Science, Engineering and Technologies edited by Professor Arun S. Mujumdar for CRC Press. It is highly recommended for engineers and scientists in the field of wood drying for personal as well as institutional libraries. The author, Dr. Vasile Minea is indeed an internationally recognized expert in wood drying as well as heat pump technologies.