Skip to main content

Feature and Application of Spray Drying Process

 


Spray drying has been employed in the food industry for concerning one hundred fifty years and is responsible for creating a number of the foremost essential ingredients and product within the food industry today—such as milk, instant low, and fine-grained flavors. Learn the key steps within the spray drying method, the highest advantages of this method, and the variables you should know for creating the perfect powder.

We encounter spray dried ingredients and food products all the time. Whenever a liquid has been converted to a shelf-stable powder, there’s a more better chance that spray drying was used. The most usually spray dried foods include:

  • Milk Powders
  • Dried Eggs
  • Instant Coffees
  • Instant Teas
  • Dried Fruit Juices
  • Honey Powders
  • Molasses Powders
  • Powdered Flavors

While there are many drying processes on the market for food, the spray drying method is distinguished by its unique equipment that enables for speedy drying with minimal heat exposure. In spray drying, a liquid is sprayed through atomizer into a chamber that contains streams of hot air. The moisture quickly evaporates, leaving behind solid powder particles that fall to bottom of the chamber.

Spray drying is ideal for heat-sensitive materials and whenever a free-flowing, uniform powder is needed. Whereas alternative drying techniques generally produces flakes that then should be ground to size, spray dryers create a free-flowing powder with a slim size distribution, making a subsequent grinding step unnecessary. Furthermore, spray drying is method of choice for commercial-scale encapsulation applications and is utilized to encapsulate flavors, carotenoids, and lipids.

The benefits of spray drying are:

  • Appropriate for heat-sensitive foods
  • Manufactures fairly uniform particle sizes
  • Makes a free-flowing powder
  • Efficient at encapsulation

Spray drying is a unique method of drying that depends on atomization to create a uniform, free-flowing powder and permits heat exposure to be kept to a minimum. The spray drying process consists of the following steps:

  • Preparation of the liquid or slurry
  • Adding the liquid feed to the spray dryer
  • Atomization of the liquid feed to create droplets
  • Drying of the droplets in a heated air stream
  • Collection of the dried particles

Two Characteristics of Spray Drying are:

  • Atomization
  • Drying Kinetics

Atomization:

Atomization is the distinguishing feature of the spray drying process and plays a critical role in determining the quality of the finished product. It involves generating a vast range of droplets from a liquid stream, thus greatly increasing its surface area and allowing faster drying rate. For example, 1 m3 of a liquid can form 2×1012 droplets with a surface area of 60,000 m2.

Atomization can be accomplished through single-fluid nozzle, two-fluid nozzle, or rotary disc atomizers which manufacture droplet sizes from 10 to 500 µm (ideally 100 to 200 µm), depending on the feed consistency and composition.

When the atomized droplets come in contact with the heated air currents entering the chamber, a series of simultaneous heat and mass transfer processes takes place. Heat is transferred to the product to evaporate moisture, and mass is transferred as a vapor into the surrounding gas.

Drying Kinetics:

The drying method can be described as having two phases: the constant-rate period and the falling-rate period. In the constant-rate period, moisture evaporates quickly from a saturated surface via diffusion through the stationary air film at a rate sufficient to maintain saturation. In the falling-rate period and as moisture removal progresses, the solute dissolved in the liquid reaches a concentration beyond its saturation concentration to form a thin shell at the droplet surface.

Kinetically, this stage marks a transformation from low- to high-temperature drying. Following this, and depending on inlet temperature, feed consistency, and atomization variables, the droplets may follow one of two principal pathways, creating either small-dense or large-hollow particles. Dried particles are recovered with separation devices such as cyclones and bag filters or are scrubbed for further collection followed by cooling and packaging.

A number of variables influence the characteristics of the finished powder, including feed properties, type of atomizer used, and airflow factors

Optimizations of these variables are often achieved through a good understanding of the spray drying method to produce particles free of imperfections and with the required properties.

We at KERONE have a team of experts to help you with your need for Spray Drying from our wide experience.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Different Types of Sterilization Process

  Sterilization can be accomplished by an amalgamation of heat, chemicals, irradiation, high pressure and filtration such as steam under pressure, dry heat, ultraviolet radiation, gas vapour sterilants, chlorine dioxide gas etc. Successful sterilization strategies are necessary for working in a lab and negligence of this could lead to severe consequences, it could unexpectedly cost a life. So what are the more frequently utilized methods of sterilization in the laboratory, and how do they work? The Sterilization is conveyed out by the methods according to requirement. The methods are: 1. Moist Heat Sterilization 2. Dry Heat Sterilization 3. Gas Sterilization and Others. Moist Heat Sterilization:  Moderate pressure is utilized in steam sterilization. Steam is utilized under pressure as a means of accomplishing an elevated temperature. It is dominant to confirm the accurate quality of steam is utilized in order to keep away the problems which follow, superheating of the steam, f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microwave Continuous Vulcanization (CV) Rubber Curing Oven

Vulcanization is process of converting natural rubber or rubber polymers into more durable and mechanically strengthens rubber by the process of mixing sulfur and processing. This process results in changing the cross-linking bonds within the natural rubber and making bonds more strong and non-sticky.  Vulcanization curing is achieved by heating the natural rubber or rubber polymer at very high temperature along with sulfur or any other agent, such high level of temperature rise results into changing of bond within the rubber and resulting in non-sticky, maker it lesser deformable when heated, and removes the brittleness this helps rubber to achieve the desired level of elasticity. Continuous Vulcanization curingprocess is most common process used for variety of application. In the process Continuous Vulcanization curing rubber and accelerator is put under high temperature and pressure, this mixture is passed through the continuous heating line during the process, some of C-...
3 comments
Read more

Organic Food and its increasing consumer demand

Organic Food Processing  is where organic raw materials are processed into food and drink. The organics standard of food processing is to protect the food constituents so that organic ingredients are used, and encourage the avoidance of unnecessary chemical or physical. Organic labeling offers consumers, the confidence that the eatables they consume are produced under controlled organic standards. Organic food should be of high nutritional and high natural quality. With the growing awareness even the governments of various countries have setup a separate body to monitor the whole Organic Processing System, in India that being National Program for Organic Production (NPOP). India is one of the upcoming leading processors in this sector. Some private standards demand that organic food should fulfill the criteria of wholesome nutrition, where processing methods must be seen as relevant tools. Most processing methods have more or less strong influences on product properties. Heat...
Post a Comment
Read more