Mechanical Coffee Dryers and Digital Twins: A Systematic Review

Mechanical coffee dryers have been widely adopted to reduce weather dependence, improve yield, and stabilize product quality. However, their operation is still energy-intensive and often suboptimal in terms of controlling the temperature, airflow and moisture content of the grains. In parallel, digital twin (DT) technology has emerged to virtually replicate complex processes and enable model-based monitoring, optimization, and control. This article presents a systematic review based on PRISMA on mechanical coffee dryers and their modeling and control strategies and the current and emerging use of digital twins in drying processes, including agricultural and food products with technological analogies to coffee. The results show a large amount of research on mathematical modeling, energy evaluation, and quality evaluation of mechanical coffee drying. Rapidly growing but still predominantly conceptual literature on digital twins for food processing and drying. Finally, only a small convergence between the two fields, with no fully realized digital twin for mechanical coffee dryers having yet been reported. This review found key gaps in the detection, data infrastructure, and development of hybrid physical-informed AI models. Finally, lines of research are proposed for mechanical coffee dryers enabled with digital twins, aimed at energy efficiency, product traceability and quality assurance.