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Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Brazilian Drying Research

Drying is a very important multidisciplinary research field playing an important role in chemical, food and agricultural processing, pharmaceutical sciences, etc. Although its development as science and technology has been taking place in the world for a very long time, challenges in process development and control, design of special dryers, and new techniques for modeling and simulation are still present due to the developments of new products and the need to reduce energy consumption. In Brazil, a great diversity of products have been dried due to its continental dimension and biodiversity. Also, the industrial development in Brazil after the 1970s stimulated new research in this field. For these reasons, drying appears as one of the strongest research fields in Brazil, attracting many renowned scientists in the country who are responsible for a great number of contributions to several international journals, especially to Drying Technology. The Brazilian Congress of Particulate Systems (ENEMP) is a special forum chosen by scientists and other professionals to present and discuss new developments in particulate systems in Brazil and drying is one of the most important themes of the Congress. It is held every 2 years and brings together researchers from all over the country. With the objective to disseminate current and innovative aspects of drying R&D in Brazil, we organized this special issue, composed of selected papers that were presented at the XXXIV Brazilian Congress of Particulate Systems (ENEMP 2009) during October 18–21, 2009, in Campinas, Brazil. We hope that the special issue will provide the global readership of this journal, both academic and industrial, with an awareness of drying R&D activities taking place in Brazil. As a rapidly emerging economy, the role of drying operations in industrial processing is very important, and this is reflected in the growing drying activities in Brazilian academia. We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Arun S. Mujumdar for the invitation to compile this peer-reviewed issue, as well as to the authors who promptly accepted our invitation to submit papers. We express our special thanks to the referees for their significant contribution to the completion of this archival issue.