Design and study of operational performance of convective industrial dryers are a strong indicator in the last stages of the selection procedure. This problem is addressed in a straightforward way for the three most popular types; conveyor-belt, fluidized bed and rotary dryers. Design was carried out by appropriately optimizing the total annual cost of each configuration for a given production capacity. All dryer types were compared explicitely by evaluating optimal configurations for a wide range of production capacity values. Once the dryer configuration is specified, its optimal operational performance was evaluated by comparing the optimum operational cost versus production capacity for predefined optimal designed structures. Rotary dryers turned to be rather expensive compared to fluidized bed dryers, regarding design. On operational grounds, however, it is the other way around due to the understandably favored heat transfer achieved in rotary dryers. Conveyor-belt dryers, when utilized, lie somewhere in between producing satisfactory results both on design and on operational grounds. A characteristic example of food dehydration process is included, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.