A novel drying system, based on the confined fluidization technique was developed. The air drying system was composed of a bed of coarse particles of silica gel between which fine glass beads were fluidized by an air stream with different contents of water vapour. The effects of gas flow velocity, diameter of the fluidized phase and the adsorbate concentration in the carrier gas were evaluated on the height of the adsorption zone (mass exchange zone) and break point using the breakthrough curve analysis. The results of drying for confined and fixed fluidized beds were compared. Experiments show that working time of the confined fluidized bed is possible to increase up to 8-12% over fixed bed.