This process is characterised by fast drying; powder particles often retain a spherical shape. Widely used as an industrial process for the production of ceramic materials, usually to increase the flowability of moulding powder and to apply additives and microcomponents onto the surface of particles before the moulding and sintering of ceramics. By keeping a distribution of saline components in the solid phase sufficiently uniform, spray drying of multicomponent solutions in conjunction with thermal decomposition of its products can also be used as an effective method to synthesise multicomponent oxide materials and composites.

This method mainly differs from the pyrolysis of aerosols in that it has a lower temperature of the carrier gas, which usually does not lead to a complete thermal decomposition of the saline components of the solution, and that nozzles are used instead of aerosol generators, creating droplets of a larger size, but with much better performance.

Spray drying is one of the main methods for producing dry products and drugs in the food and (to a lesser extent) pharmaceutical industries.