• Energy Research

AbstractThis study aimed to reduce the drying time of mace under microwave pre‐treatment and to analyze the energy, exergy, and techno‐economic feasibility of the process. Effect of microwave pretreatments were studied under three microwave power levels of 160, 320, and 480 W for an exposure time of 60 s. Drying time during convective drying without microwave pretreatment was 5.5 h, which was decreased by 18.2%, 27.3%, and 36.4% at microwave powers of 160, 320, and 480 W respectively. Moisture content of mace decreased from 45.66 ± 1.14% to 6%. under various drying conditions. The two‐term exponential model fitted the drying data under optimized conditions. The drying efficiency and exergy efficiency of the microwave assisted drying of mace was observed to be 29.53% and 26.74%, respectively. The values of economic attributes indicated the benefit cost ratio of 1.9 and payback period of 2.1 years. The sustainability index and environment destruction coefficient of the system was determined to be 1.10 and 2.41, respectively. Waste energy ratio, environmental impact factor and improvement potential of the developed drying process was 0.72, 1.52, and 0.46, respectively. The study concluded that microwave at optimal power of 320 W can be utilized for commercial production of mace with better retention of essential oil, oleoresin and color.

The study aims to comprehensively assess the energy and water consumption pattern in the seafood industries and suggest measures for the sustainable development of the sector. The unscrupulous usage of water and higher consumption of energy resulted in an uncontrolled generation of wastewater and enormous usage of fossil fuels. In the seafood industry, energy is primarily used for machinery and equipment handling processes such as freezing, refrigeration, heating, cooling, and drying. Similarly, a huge amount of clean water is used for cleaning machinery and plant, and for operations like washing of raw material, de-icing, defrosting, and salt splashing. As a consequence, in the energy-water nexus, additional energy is required for drawing fresh water and further processing of wastewater demands energy that results in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and incurring additional costs to the plant. Hence, this review mainly focuses on the significance of energy and water use optimization in the seafood industry, the existing trend of energy and water use pattern and management practices, optimization strategies, and the seafood-energy-water nexus and its environmental implications.