Perspectives in drying of ceramics

Drying is a crucial stage in many ceramic processing routes with two major issues. First, it may lead to warping or cracks that can be detrimental to the product quality, and second it requires a significant amount of energy input. This is increasingly becoming a major concern in the traditional ceramic industry. After reviewing the basic concepts in drying of ceramics, this article presents recent trends from the state of the art and discusses some future perspectives. The discussion covers both fundamental aspects of the drying behaviour of ceramics and also more technological ones related to processing and setting of the drying conditions. The contribution of modelling to the study of drying is also discussed. Finally, we present a novel approach based on machine learning that can help to control the drying process by identifying the end of the shrinkage stage from real time observations taken with an optical camera.