Conclusions
Ultrasound can be effectively used as a pre treatment to reduce energy consumption and drying time during hot air convective drying of seaweed.
Distilled water was used as medium to transfer ultrasonic energy to the seaweed,weight gain due to moisturegain and solid losses were observed due to the combined effects of cavitation and concentration gradient phenomena.
Among the different models investigated to model the drying kinetics, the Newton, Wang and Singh, and Midilli et al. models had the best fit with high R2 and low RMSE values.
Ultrasound can also assist in retaining the color properties of seaweed. This study demonstrates that ultrasound pre treatment has potential application for reducing energy consumption in commercial drying of seaweed.
Further investigation is required before adoption in large scale industrial operations.