Kiln drying is a common practice in seasoning
timbers all over the world. In Bangladesh,
kiln drying of timber is employed by the timber
complexes of the Bangladesh Forest Industries
Development Corporation (BFIDC) and some
government and private organisations. In
order to facilitate the proper seasoning of
timbers, kiln drying schedules have been
developed at the Forest Research Institute,
Chittagong (Ali, Sattar and Talukdar 1975;
Sattar 1980). In conventional kiln drying,
low temperature and high humidity are
generally employed in the initial stages of
drying, which ultimately make the process
slow. The need for accelerated drying of
timbers, without deteriorating the quality of the
product itself, is thus felt. High temperature
drying was first envisaged to alleviate the