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Vacuum microwave food dehydrator

 

Purpose
The machine is intended for dehydrating at low temperature in humid climates. If you do not mind higher temperature, then a regular oven with the door slightly open will dry food fine. If you live in a place where the air is dry all year round, then food will dry without any machine in a well ventilated place.

Quality
This is a microwave vacuum dehydrator, although it's faster and and cheaper than a freeze dryer, the end result will look shrunk/shriveled or sometimes puffed up (cheese), therefore the look of the food will not be as beautiful as with a freeze dryer.
It is difficult to achieve crispiness with this dryer at low temperature, because removing the last percents of moisture either takes a long time at low power setting, or it will cook the food at higher power (and you would not need this machine if you intended to cook the food dry in the first place).
For the best result I recommend removing the bulk of the water content of the food with this machine and then let the dried food finish drying in another airtight container with some quicklime inside. Because most of the water has been already removed, the food will not spoil, and the quicklime will slowly suck the moisture from the atmosphere of the container. The quicklime should not be mixed with the food, it just sits in the same airtight container.

Capacity
The food bowl is 2 liters, it can be fully filled with light things like herbs or flowers. Because juices foam, only half of the volume can be filled with them. For meat, it has to be cut in 1cm thick pieces and only a 3rd of the volume can be used, you can fill in more meat, but then you will have to dry slowly because heat distributions will not be uniform.

Working principle
The device is air cooled and requires a ventilated room (or a big room). It works by boiling the water in the food under vacuum (the boiling temperature is lowered by vacuum). It can dry about 1 liter of liquid or food in about 2 hours to 10 % or less  humidity. If you require super dry (crispy) it is easier to finish the drying using another process (I recommend quicklime in a sealed container see "Quality" above).
Diagram:

Price
1400 USD, microwave oven and vacuum pump included

Build time/Lead time
it takes 6 weeks after receiving payment to build the machine

Here's a deep dry run on beef for the jerky lovers:

Credit
This product was inspired by the open publication How to make a microwave vacuum dryer with turntable from Ricardo Lemos Monteiro, Bruno Augusto Mattar Carciofi, Antonio Marsaioli Jr and João Borges Laurindo.