Spray drying is a continuous and scalable process which has been used in the food industry for over 150 years mainly for converting dairy and fruit fluids, starches, proteins, honey and molasses into shelf-stable powders. Today, spray drying is considered the method of choice for commercial scale encapsulation applications. Unlike other drying techniques which form cakes requiring further grinding and sizing, spray dryers can efficiently generate free flowing micron particles with narrow size distribution.
What is a Spray Dryer?
Spray dryers are solid state reactors where a crystalline starting material is transformed into an amorphous product via a series of heat and mass transfer processes. Spray drying unit operations include sequentially: atomization of a liquid feed, mixing the droplets with a heated air stream and drying followed by removal and collection of the dried particles.
How Does Spray Drying Process Work?
The spray drying process allows for liquid solutions and solid materials to be transformed into dry granular powders, in order to achieve a variety of industrial applications. The production of these spray dried powders is accomplished by rapidly drying the liquid solution (also known as slurry) with a hot air stream that is distributed through an atomizer or spray nozzle. Both the atomizer and spray nozzle produce the desired granular material, but the atomizer wheel provides a broader particle size distribution, which may be desired depending on exact requirements.
What are the advantages of using spray drying?
Quality Control
Spray drying produces powders of controllable particle size and overall quality. Other characteristics manipulated during spray drying include bulk density, degree of crystallinity and residual solvent levels. Being able to control these parameters makes the process desirable for industries like pharmaceuticals, where the optimum absorption of a drug depends greatly on particle size. In dyestuff production, powders of uniform consistency ensure their convenient dispersion into paint suspensions. The food industry puts a premium on moisture content, which determines a product’s shelf life.
Fortress Nutrition LLC is the industry leader in the Spray Drying Process
We’re pioneers in food trends, and we’re ready for any changes that come our way. Fortress Nutrition LLC has a solid history of meeting strict specifications for our customers based on consumer preference, restrictive diets and much more.
Rest assured that you’re in good hands with Fortress Nutrition. To learn more about how we tailor our blending, ingredient sourcing, logistics, consumer packaging, and other services to meet customer needs, and to find out how we can partner with you to ensure compliance with new GMO laws, contact us today.