Mole extensive use of industrial polymeric products in industry and domestic markets requires larger quantities of such pi ducts being dried The ability to describe drying of these products quantitatively is becoming more important An appropriate drying model can assist in design to save energy Most published studies have employed diffusion-based models to describe drying kinetics which I Nun e substantial amount of work to deter mine diffusivity function Reaction engineering approach (REA) is a simple-lumped but accurate model which can be implemented in computational fluid dynamics (CM) for coupling of objects being dried and flow field mound In this paper, the reaction engineering approach (REA) is implemented as a simple alternative to describe the drying kinetics of a thin layer of polymer solution in constant convective drying condition for the first time Results show that the model is suitable when compared to published experimental data In addition, for infrared drying a new definition of Delta E-p b (maximum activation energy) had to be introduced With this new definition, the reaction engineering approach (REA) describes the drying kinetics of infrared drying very well (C) 2010 Elsevier BV All rights reserved