SpeeDrying · An Innovative and Sustainable Spray Drying Technology

An Innovative and Sustainable Spray Drying Technology

Spray drying (SD) is the main process used for producing powders from a liquid feed. It has unique advantages, such as the ability to produce powders with a specific particle size and moisture content, handling heat sensitive products, and possibility of high volume application. In recent years, the research focus was on understanding and modelling the SD process to facilitate the choice of operating conditions and to optimize energy usage. However, SD remains a complex energy intensive process. There is a need to develop and industrially implement flexible and sustainable processes for the production of highly functional powders from a complex multiphase liquid feed. SD is a convective drying method, which has low thermal efficiency. A liquid feed is atomized at the top of a drying chamber into a flow of hot air. Due to the low energy efficiency, industrial SD chambers have a large volume, making difficult to control morphology and quality of the final product. Large volumes also lead to longer warm-up periods, as a larger hot air flow needs to be ensured. Unlike the convective heating, electromagnetic drying is rapid and energy efficient, it promotes expulsion of inner water to the surface, and it allows selective heating of the materials. This project aimed for: (i) exploring electromagnetic drying to suggest the design of a sustainable SD process; (ii) generating products with well-defined structure and functionality, by new drying technology and detailed structure development, to design innovative powders. The work was performed on a lab and pilot scale, transferring fundamental to applied knowledge. Potential of applying electromagnetic drying on a single particle for designing a more energy efficient process was demonstrated. By selecting the right wavelength the drying speed was improved and a heated medium was avoided. Process-structure-property functions were established. Finally, this project set science for processing new food/pharma powder structures with innovative functions to meet consumers’ needs, by generating potential for related future products of interest for food and pharmaceutical industries. Moreover, the demonstrated potential of using electromagnetic heating set the base for the development of an innovative and sustainable SD process, which is expected to have significant economic and environmental impact.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз