Microwave vacuum-drying of organic materials
AssigneeEnwave Corporation
InventorsJun Fu, Timothy D. Durance, Parastoo Yaghmaee
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An apparatus 20 for microwave vacuum-drying organic materials such as foods and bioactives has a plurality of microwave generators 50 actuated so as to cause interference between their respective microwave streams and evenly distribute the microwave energy across the vacuum chamber 34. The microwave-transparent window 36 in the chamber is arranged so the organic material to be dried is moved across it on a conveyor belt 60 and the microwave energy passing into the chamber 34 immediately encounters the organic materials, thus attenuating the energy and reducing arcing.
Claims16
A method of dehydrating an organic material, comprising the steps of:
- (a) introducing the organic material into a vacuum chamber, the chamber being arranged to receive microwave radiation from a set of two or more microwave generators, the generators in the set being positioned such that a stream of microwaves from any one generator overlaps with a stream of microwaves from any other generator of the set;
- (b) reducing pressure in the vacuum chamber to a pressure less than atmospheric;
- (c) actuating and de-actuating the two or more generators of the set a plurality of times and producing a confluent stream of microwaves and randomly scanning the confluent stream of microwaves across the microwave-transparent window, effecting random changes in the microwave distribution in the vacuum chamber, to dehydrate the organic material in the vacuum chamber;
- and
- (d) removing the dehydrated organic material from the vacuum chamber.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.