ABSTRACT
Drying offers several advantages including increased shelf life, reduced weight and volume, and reduction of transportation and inventory cost. Although drying is a mature field, there are many issues that still prevail and therefore needs continuous research. This chapter discusses several materials that are often subjected to the drying process. Following this, the available drying methods and the optimum drying conditions of these materials are discussed in detail. Materials that are subjected to the drying process are diverse in nature. Classification of these materials is not an easy task. However, for the convenience of drying model description, we need to classify the available materials based on their thermophysical and structural characteristics. Most of the non-metallic materials possess pores, and the pores may either increase or decrease during drying. Moist grains rapidly deteriorate if stored without drying to the equilibrium moisture content.
