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.
Claims18
An apparatus for dehydrating organic material, comprising:
- (a) a vacuum chamber;
- (b) a set of two or more microwave generators;
- (c) a microwave-transparent window for transmission of microwave radiation from the microwave generators into the vacuum chamber;
- (d) a microwave chamber between the microwave generators and the microwave-transparent window, the two or more microwave generators in the set being positioned such that a stream of microwaves from any one generator overlaps in the microwave chamber with a stream of microwaves from any other generator of the set;
- and
- (e) a programmable logic controller that controls the operation of the microwave generators to repeatedly actuate and de-actuate the microwave generators and produce a confluent stream of microwaves and randomly scan the confluent stream of microwaves across the microwave-transparent window, effecting random changes in the microwave distribution in the vacuum chamber.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.