For a long time, food engineers have been trying to describe the physical phenomena that occur during food processing especially drying. Physics-based theoretical modeling is an important tool for the food engineers to reduce the hurdles of experimentation. Drying of food is a multi-physics phenomenon such as coupled heat and mass transfer. Moreover, food structure is multi-scale in nature, and the microstructural features play a great role in the food processing specially in drying. Previously simple macroscopic model was used to describe the drying phenomena which can give a little description about the smaller scale. The multiscale modeling technique can handle all the phenomena that occur during drying. In this special kind of modeling approach, the single scale models from bigger to smaller scales are interconnected. With the help of multiscale modeling framework, the transport process associated with drying can be studied on a smaller scale and the resulting information can be transferred to the bigger scale. This article is devoted to discussing the state of the art multi-scale modeling, its prospect and challenges in the field of drying technology. This article has also given some directions to how to overcome the challenges for successful implementation of multi-scale modeling.

中文翻译：

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食品干燥的多尺度模型：现状和挑战

长期以来，食品工程师一直试图描述在食品加工过程中发生的物理现象，尤其是干燥过程。基于物理的理论建模是食品工程师减少实验障碍的重要工具。食物干燥是一种多物理现象，例如热与质量传递耦合。而且，食品结构本质上是多尺度的，并且微观结构特征在食品加工中特别是在干燥中起着重要作用。以前使用简单的宏观模型来描述干燥现象，这可以对较小的规模进行一些描述。多尺度建模技术可以处理干燥期间发生的所有现象。在这种特殊的建模方法中，从大比例尺到小比例尺的单比例尺模型是相互关联的。借助多尺度建模框架，可以在较小尺度上研究与干燥相关的运输过程，并且可以将所得信息传递到更大尺度。本文致力于讨论最先进的多尺度建模，其前景以及干燥技术领域中的挑战。本文还为如何克服成功实施多尺度建模提出了一些指导。