The 13^th International Drying Symposium was being held in the beautiful Chinese capital city of Beijing, China during August 27-30, 2002; this was the second time the symposium was hosted by an Asian country (the first IDS held in Asia was IDS84 in Kyoto, Japan). The symposium welcomed 296 participants (from 42 counties) from almost all parts of the world viz. Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, North, Central and South Americas. This again made the symposium a truly international forum for the exchange and dissemination of ideas related to the science and engineering of drying - a tradition that has continued for the past 24 years since its inception by Professor A.S. Mujumdar at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1978.

A total of 236 papers (8 keynotes and 228 contributed papers) written by 546 authors from 43 countries appear in the elegantly produced 3-volume hardcover set of proceedings (which can be purchased by writing to the address given at the end of this report). As is seen in Figure 1 the contribution to the technical program of the host was the greatest, which is expected; this trend was true as well for all but the last IDS (IDS2000 where France took the lead rather than the host, the Netherlands). Brazil and Japan, as usual, contributed a large portion to the pool. Thailand also emerged as a bigger contributor at this IDS, probably due to its closer traveling distance from China. The contribution of France, however, was not as strong as the in the past several IDS's.

Figure 1. Distribution of authors of IDS2002 papers by their country of origin

Looking at the distribution of authors by their continent of origin (Figure 2) may indicate the belief that the interest in drying research is declining in North America while it is still well maintained in Asia and Europe. However, the 9/11 effect has probably affected North America and Western Europe more than elsewhere, which can bias the statistics. So, care must be taken in drawing any definitive conclusions. The contributions from South American countries were also quite high despite the long distance and the high cost of travel from the conference venue. The rising interest in drying research of the African countries was also noticed at this IDS.

Figure 2. Distribution of authors of IDS2002 papers by their continent of origin

A total of 329 abstracts were submitted to the Conference Secretariat while 240 manuscripts were received and 236 of them were accepted and appear in the proceedings.

Eight keynote lectures were given at IDS2002 by internationally recognized experts in drying. Prof. Arun S. Mujumdar, the founder of the IDS series, of the National University of Singapore and McGill University, Canada, gave a plenary lecture on the research and development in drying and its future trends. He emphasized the need for the university-industry interaction in nurturing the drying research and development - the idea that has also been echoed by a lot of participants even before the end of the symposium! Another 7 keynote papers cover the topics ranging from spray drying, polymer drying, food drying, paper drying to the modeling and simulation of drying processes, recent developments in heat and mass transfer of single droplets and the review of drying R&D in China.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of IDS2002 papers by their themes. Among the 228 contributed papers, 160 were presented orally while the rest were presented in poster sessions. This lengthened the overall duration of the IDS by a full day compared with previous IDS meetings.

It can be seen in Figure 3, considering the interest of the host country and its neighbors, that the number of papers devoted to drying of food and agricultural products is the highest. This trend has indeed started to hold since the past several IDS's (Coumans, 1997; Pakowski, 1999). Papers on osmotic dehydration were again so numerous that a separate session was devoted to it aside from sessions on food and agricultural products drying. The share of papers devoted to fundamentals and modeling of drying/dryers and that concerning with various types of dryers (fluid bed, spouted bed, spray, freeze, flash & impinging streams, and microwave dryers) were equal in number; similar statistics were again observed during the past several IDS's.

Twenty five percent of all papers appearing in the proceedings were written by industrial authors or co-authors; the level of the desirable university-industry interaction was still quite low. Of all papers, about 16% were joint efforts of authors from different countries. A higher level of an international collaboration on drying R&D is still possible although this number is already quite impressive! This is clearly an indicator of the globalization of R&D.

Figure 3. Distribution of IDS2002 papers by their topics

Despite some minor inconveniences, e.g., incorrect organization of papers into their sessions, IDS2002 was definitely a success. All members of the organizing committee must be congratulated for their success, which, of course, was due to their efforts both before and during the conference.

At the end I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Profs. C.W. Cao and C. Strumillo for supplying me with numbers and statistics belong to IDS2002. Thanks are also due to Ms. Rungtip Tapaneyasin of Food Eng., KMUTT for her assistance in compiling data from the IDS2002 proceedings.

REFERENCES

Coumans, W.J., 1997, Some Impression from IDS'96, Drying Technology - An International Journal, 15(3&4), pp. 1243-1250.

Pakowski, Z., 1999, Impression of IDS'98 as IDS Completes 20 Years, Drying Technology - An International Journal, 17(6), pp. 1247- 1253.

The 3 volumes of IDS2002 proceedings can be purchased by sending your name, address and money order (US$120 for sea mail, US$180 for air mail and US$210 for express mail) to: