The Physico-Chemical Mechanism of Sea-Weed Drying

Gardner, Robert George (1954) The Physico-Chemical Mechanism of Sea-Weed Drying. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Drying of seaweed is desirable to reduce transport costs, to prevent decomposition and to permit easy compounding in feeding stuffs. Drying and grinding may be a preliminary stage in the extraction of algal chemicals. In all cases it is essential that drying is cheap and efficient, and this work is concerned with the investigation of this problem. The main seaweed studied was Laminaria cloustoni which is one of the commonest sublittoral species around British shores. L. digitata is also common and was compared with L. cloustoni: L. saccharina received less attention. The principal parts of these seaweeds are the stipe or stem containing 83-86% water and the fronds or blades with 75-90% water. A coating of mucilage on the fronds causes adhesion of cut pieces. The physical properties of these parts made it probable that dryers of the rotary-louvre, pneumatic and through-circulation types would be the most suitable for seaweed drying, and tests were made on each of these. It was shown that minced L. cloustoni stipe was readily dried in a rotary-louvre dryer, but that the sticky frond did not dry uniformly. A radioactive tracer technique was devised to measure the retention time of the frond in the dryer drum. A large-scale pneumatic dryer dealt easily with chopped stipe and whole plant, but again frond drying was unsatisfactory. A through-circulation grass dryer yielded a high quality dried seaweed meal from chopped frond. From these tests it was decided to make a detailed investigation of the drying characteristics of seaweed in a laboratory through-circulation dryer. The experimental procedure for cut stipe was established by preliminary tests on the effects of initial water content, interruption of drying and repeatability. The principal factors studied were: Bed depth, (0.5 - 7 in), Air temperature, (120 - 340

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Physical chemistry, Food science
• Date of Award: 1954
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1954-79082
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 05 Mar 2020 11:44
• Last Modified: 05 Mar 2020 11:44
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/79082