Experimental data concerning NaCl concentration profiles for industrially processed Emmental cheese were determined with cylindrical samples ensuring semi-infinite unidirectional mass transfer with saturated brining aqueous solutions for different temperature conditions in the range between 4 and 18 degreesC. Considering a binary diffusion system constituted by the cheese water and the NaCl solute, the NaCl diffusion kinetics were analyzed at each investigated temperature by three different approaches: firstly, using the second Fick's law with a constant NaCl diffusivity, which gave a poor interpretation of the experimental data; secondly, using the Boltzmann's method with a concentration dependent NaCl diffusion coefficient and thirdly, by numerical identification from the diffusion equation with an empirical variation of the NaCl diffusivity with the salt concentration (2nd order polynomial) and a boundary condition expressing the mass flux continuity at the interface. As a whole, the derived diffusivity values were found to be in good agreement with the previous published data concerning different cheese types. These two last analyses clearly indicated a decrease of the NaCl effective diffusivity with the salt concentration and, secondly, an increase of this diffusivity with the temperature. Finally, the last modelling, based on a quadratic reduction in the salt diffusivity with the salt concentration and on a Dirichlet (type II) limit condition lead to the best fitting between the measured and the predicted NaCl concentration profiles. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.