4. Conclusion

The diversity of drying situations in the food industry, as the preceding examples have shown, has led to a wide variety of technological solutions. In all cases, it is the nature of the product, its handling characteristics, its thermal fragility and its properties of use that guide the choice of drying process and parameters. This is why the solutions arrived at, through practice and research, can be quite different from those used in the chemical industry, paper mills, etc. This is why this article is so interesting. This justifies the interest of this dossier in Techniques de l'Ingénieur, even if the physical bases of drying are largely common to all industrial sectors.

In industrial reality, drying operations are almost always integrated into production lines. In particular, drying is often preceded by pre-treatment and followed by post-treatment operations,...