C. Judson King

King's interest in hiking and camping reinforced his interests in freeze-dried foods to minimize the weight of his back-pack.[8] He has done considerable research on dehydration of foods and beverages, and in particular those phenomena that influence the quality of the product. He started working with freeze drying, which removes water by direct vaporization from the frozen state. Although he started by measuring and explaining drying rates in terms of fundamental transport phenomena, he soon turned to learning how highly volatile substances such as taste and aroma components could best be retained despite their being much more volatile than the water which was itself being vaporized during evaporative drying. In 1971, King published a book, Freeze Drying of Foods.[10]

King also gave a fundamental understanding of the phenomenon of product collapse during freeze drying and how to avoid it. That research was also valuable to the pharmaceutical industry which also often uses freeze drying. He also worked with freeze concentration for beverages, such as fruit juices, wherein water is frozen as suspended ice crystals which are then filtered out. These lines of research were financed by the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. Subsequent research supported by the U. S. Army dealt with limited freeze drying that would leave enough water to provide sufficient pliability of the product for compression to smaller size for military uses.[11]

King later turned to spray drying of beverages and other liquids, for which the loss of volatile flavor and aroma substances occurs largely in the spray-nozzle zone, where the droplets to be dried are formed. King and his colleagues examined factors influencing the loss of volatile flavors and aroma and also the factors affecting the development of particle morphology (size, shape, porosity, and thus the bulk density) of the dried product. They interpreted the factors that cause spray-dried particles to be sticky. In later research, King and his colleagues created a device to enable simultaneous measurement of particle morphology and loss of volatile components as the drying of single drops to particles took place. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation. He prepared review articles on retention of volatile flavor and aroma components during spray drying.[11]

In later research, King and his colleagues created a device to enable simultaneous measurement of particle morphology and loss of volatile components as the drying of single drops to particles took place.[12]

Some of King's research has dealt with the removal and recovery of polar organic substances from aqueous streams in two contexts. Research on removal of pollutants by solvent extraction was supported by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. He later turned to the use of solvent extraction and adsorption, with and without chemical complexation, for recovery of carboxylic acids, glycols and alcohols from aqueous process streams, such as occur in the manufacture of these chemicals from biomass by fermentation. Much of this work also dealt with novel methods of regeneration of the extractants or adsorbents. The research was sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy through the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[8]

In the initial years of his research, King focused on fundamental mechanisms of mass transfer between gases and liquids. This applied to separation processes such as absorption and distillation. Some of his other work dealt with systematic methods for synthesizing processes from component steps, such as sequencing multiple distillation columns and cascade refrigeration systems.[11]

King stopped chemical engineering research in 1999, part-way through his service as Provost and Sr. Vice President for the University of California, university-wide. When he returned in 2004 to be director of Berkeley's Center for Studies in Higher Education, he wrote a number of papers relating to university structure, function, and governance and then the book on the University of California.[11]

King wrote the book Separation Processes in 1971.[13] In the book, King presented that each of the separation processes (distillation, extraction, absorption, etc.) is a special case of a unified technology that can be described by a general set of quantitative principles. Before that, the standard separation operations were considered to be separate topics within the category of unit operations, with separate methodologies.[8]

The book was revised for a second edition in 1980. After the book went out of print, King secured the copyright back from McGraw-Hill and put it on eScholarship, where it is available open-access.[14]

In 2018, King published the book, The University of California: Creating, Nurturing, and Maintaining Academic Quality in a Public University Setting.[15] The book examines in depth the factors that have contributed to the academic success of University of California. He has made the book freely available through eScholarship.[16][17]

• Separation Processes (1971); 2nd edition (1980)
• Freeze Drying of Foods (1971)
• The University of California: Creating, Nurturing, and Maintaining Academic Quality in a Public University Setting (2018)

• O. C. Sandall, C. J. King & C. R. Wilke, "The Relationship between Transport Properties and Rates of Freeze Drying of Poultry Meat", AIChE Jour., 13, 428-438 (1967).
• S. K. Chandrasekaran & C. J. King, "Multicomponent Diffusion and Vapor-Liquid Equilibria of Dilute Organic Components in Aqueous Sugar Solution", AIChE Jour., 18, 513-520 (1972).
• R. J. Bellows & C. J. King, "Freeze-drying of Aqueous Solutions: Maximum Allowable Operating Temperature", Cryobiology, 9, 559-561 (1972).
• T. G. Kieckbusch & C. J. King, "Volatiles Loss during Atomization in Spray Drying", AIChE Jour., 21, 718-725 (1980).
• G. E. Downton, J. L. Flores-Luna & C. J. King, "Mechanism of Stickiness in Hygroscopic, Amorphous Powders", Ind. Eng. Chem. Fundamentals, 21, 447-451 (1982).
• A. S. Kertes & C. J. King, "Extraction Chemistry of Fermentation Product Carboxylic Acids", Biotechnol. & Bioengg., 28, 269-282 (1986).
• C. J. King, "Separation Processes Based on Reversible Chemical Complexation", Ch. 15 in R. W. Rousseau, ed., Handbook of Separation Process Technology, pp. 760–774, Wiley, 1987.
• T. M. El-Sayed, D. A. Wallack & C. J. King, "Changes in Particle Morphology during Drying of Drops", Parts I & II, Ind. Engg. Chem. Research, 29, 2346-2354 (1990).
• C. J. King, "Amine-based System for Carboxylic Acid Recovery: Tertiary Amines and the proper choice of diluent allow extraction and recovery from water", CHEMTECH, 285-291 (May, 1992).
• L. A. Tung & C. J. King, "Sorption and Extraction of Lactic and Succinic Acids at pH>pKa1", Parts I & II, Ind. Engg. Chem. Res., 34, 3217-3229 (1994).