The Advantages Of Spray Dryer Tower

Posted by Brett Slansky | 7:32 AM | 0 comments »

By Stella Gay


Spray drying is one of the dehydration methods chosen for the pharmaceutical and food industries, employs an atomized and a stream of hot gas to produce granules and dry powders from a slurry or liquid. The atomizer will disperse liquid feed into fine droplets from which the liquid evaporates and leaving behind solids. Products dried with the use of this process include cake mix, powered milk, detergent, instant coffee, ceramic powder and yeast extract.

It provides an excellent presentation of the product, continuous process, constantly monitored and controlled and installation operated by only one worker. It has also a full automation, a 24 hour day operation and can produce a homogenous product. Actually, spray dryer tower is used to convert a liquid solution or suspension to a dry, free flowing powder.

Another advantage is its quality control. The method produces powder of the overall quality and controllable particle size. Other characteristics are also manipulated during the process including a degree of crystallinity, bulk density and residual solvent levels. Being able to control the parameters also make the entire method desirable for industries like pharmaceuticals, where an absorption of the drug depends on the particle size.

There are many reasons why using this tool for your drying applications is very important. This is because it can control the particle size. The dry particle size can be controlled by atomization of the liquid feed and the designs of the hot gas inlets. A proper way to obtain a spray dryer design and technique could increase the yields for products that usually require classification.

The shape of the spray dried particles is also spherical, which can provide for fluid like flow properties. This makes a lot of downstream operations such as pressing, packaging, handling and filtering easier at lesser cost. It also produces homogenous products for multiple solutions. Most of the particles will be of the same composition.

The mass and heat may transfer during the process and occurs in the vapor and air films that surround the droplets. This protective envelope of the vapor keeps each particle at the saturation temperature. The surface area produced by the atomization enables a short gas resident time depending on the application which allows the process without thermal degradation.

To offer a real example why one must consider the method is the milk. In different parts of the world, refrigeration is not the main stream in regions such as North America. The ability to keep large quantities of products cold like milk is also limited. In this region, powdered milk is used as needed, thus increasing its shelf life.

Most of the fat soluble vitamins in most powdered nutrient premix can also be done by using the tool and process of the nutrients and adding them to the premix. Most of these dryers also give an immediate method for drying product than other methods.

Recent research is not recommending that the use of these techniques may be a good alternative method for crystallization during the process since the temperature effects may be significant depending on residence times.




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