In the present work, fresh banana slices were dehydrated at various drying air temperatures (35, 40, and 45 C) using novel heat pump-assisted drying system (HPADS) operating in a close loop. Drying air temperature significantly influences the drying time; as the drying temperature increases, drying time is reduced linearly. Increase in slice thickness of the sample increases drying time. Verma et al.'s model was considered to select the best fit model and describe the actual data. Effective moisture diffusivity varied from 1.05 Â 10 À10 to 1.56 Â 10 À10 m 2 /s at temperatures 35 and 45 C, respectively. Arrhenius equation was used to correlate the dependency of moisture diffusivity with temperature and activation energy found to be 42.58 kJ/mol. Water activity (A w ) varied from 0.750 to 0.577 at temperatures 35 and 45 C, respectively. Hence, for A w < 0.6 at 45 C drying temperature, micro-organismscan no longer extract water for their growth, and enzymes become inactive. Specific moisture removal ratio and coefficient of performance of system were found to be 0.230 kg/kWh and 3.168, correspondingly, at maximum temperature (45 C). Therefore, a developed novel HPADS is recommended for small farmers and cottage industries.