SPRAY DRYING

Julia Nofadini (1306370972), Teknologi Bioproses

Spray drying is a widely used manufacturing process which uses the aerosol phase to dry particles. The
technology has been applied in many areas, including the food, pharmaceutical, ceramic, polymer, and chemical
industries (Masters,1972). Spray drying is a well-established technique that has been used for over a century but it
remains an active field of innovation, driven by the ever increasing demand for more sophisticated particles. In the
pharmaceutical industry spray drying is used to manufacture particles that form the basis for dry dosage forms for
parenteral, nasal, or pulmonary delivery, and are administered as suspensions, powders, or aerosols. These particles
must be able to stabilize the active pharmaceutical ingredient and provide physical stability for the dosage form on
storage. They must have adequate powder flow properties and dispersibility, and, in the case of respiratory delivery,
suitable aerodynamic properties.
Compared to freeze drying, spray drying is significantly less expensive both in terms of operation and capital
costs. In this chapter, key features of spray drying such as underlying operational principle, types of spray nozzles
used, the flow pattern of droplets/particles and drying medium within the drying chamber, the particle formation
process of individual droplet are discussed in considerable detail. Finally, the most commonly considered
characteristics of spray dried powders including morphology, crystalline/amorphous nature and solubility. Spray drying
involves the atomization and drying (particle formation) of aqueous or organic solutions to produce solid material in a
single unit operation using hot air or inert gas.The appearance, flow property, compressibility, bulk density,
dispersibility, solubility, nutritional value and storage stability of spray dried powders depend on the nature of the
material and the spray drying parameters.

Advantages of Spray Drying

The widespread application of spray drying technology is due to its inherent advantages. Some of the advantages
of this technology are listed below:
a) Drying is instant and produces more or less uniform and spherical particles from nano scale to micron scale
sizes with some greater control over size and morphology.
b) It can be easily scaled up. Feed rates can be varied from a few kilograms per hour to over 100 tons per hour.
c) The actual spray drying process is very rapid, with the major portion of evaporation taking place in less than
a few seconds. Therefore, the thermal degradation, denaturation and loss of the nutrients are minimal. It
makes the drying of heat sensitive materials possible with maximum retention of the active constituents.
d) Operation is continuous and adaptable to full automatic control.
e) Various designs of the spray dryers are available to meet various product specifications.
f) Solutions, slurries, pastes, gels, suspensions and even melts can be spray dried.
g) Control over the particle size, bulk density, and degree of crystallinity is achievable to a greater extent.
h) It is reasonably economical, for example, it is 4 to 7 times economical compared to freeze drying (Chavez
and Ledeboer, 2007).

Disadvantages of Spray Drying

Despite its numerous advantages,this technology comes with the following disadvantages :
a) Industrial spray dryers, especially with large capacity, are becoming sophisticated in terms of structure and
control mechanism. Thus, they require large initial capital investment.
b) The thermal efficiency of spray drying process is also relatively poor unless the difference between inlet and
outlet temperature is very large (Masters, 1997; Bankar et al., 2014).
c) In some cases, recovery of the dried powders is difficult and the loss of product occurs due to the escape of
fine particles with exhaust air and/or significant deposition of the product on the wall of the drying chamber.
For example, wall deposition is a major problem in spray drying of sugar and acid-rich products.
d) Spray drying requires specifically trained technical manpower for successful operation and maintenance.

Working Principle of Spray Drying Process

During spray drying, highly dispersed liquid droplets are brought into contact with a sufficient volume of hot
air to achieve rapid evaporation of solvent so that the solid particles can be collected. The exhaust air or inert gas laden
with moisture or other solvent is allowed to escape the drying chamber. Fig. 1 represents the schematic diagram of the
spray drying process. The method of atomization and the arrangement of flow of droplets/particles and the drying
medium within the drying chamber (co-current, counter-current or mixed mode) are important for minimizing the
thermal and dehydration stresses in the product. It is always desirable that the outlet temperature is always held low
and the drying is achieved as quickly as possible (Masters, 1997).

Spray drying is a mostly convective drying process. There are four fundamental steps involved in spray drying
(Broadhead et al., 1992; Filkova et al., 2006): (1) Atomization of a liquid feed into fine droplets, (2) Droplet-hot air
contact (3) Evaporation of droplet water and (4) Recovery of the powder. In addition, the feedstock is normally
concentrated prior to introduction into the spray dryer. The higher solid content in the feed reduces the amount of water
(or solvent) that must be evaporated and hence improves the energy efficiency. Each of these steps is described in detail
in the subsequent section.
1) Atomization
Atomization is the first step in spray drying. It involves atomizing and dispersing the feed into millions of fine
droplets to greatly increase the surface area and thereby to greatly increase the heat and mass transfer (Hede et al.,
2008). The higher the energy applied to achieve atomization, the smaller will be the droplets/particles
(Gharsallaoui et al., 2007). Atomization is the most critical step for achieving better operational economy and high
product quality. The size distribution of the liquid droplet and the size distribution of the dried powder depend on
the type of the atomizers used and the operating parameters such as rotational speed, pressure drop and flow rate of
the liquid substance to be dried (Masters, 1997). Three types of atomizers are commercially available and used in
spray drying operations. They are: (a) Single fluid pressure nozzle, (b) Two-fluid nozzle (also known as pneumatic
atomizer), (c) Rotary atomizer (also known as spinning disc or centrifugal atomizer), and (d) Ultrasonic
atomization.
a) Single fluid pressure nozzle atomization
The pressure nozzle atomizer has two basic components: a device to create rotation of feed within the
nozzle head and an orifice through which the feed is discharged as a conical spray (Fig. 2- A). The feed enters

into the nozzle under pressure and it exits the nozzle as fine droplets (Broadhead et al., 1992). The size of the
droplets is determined by the size of the orifice and the operating pressure.
b) Rotary atomization
The rotary atomizer consists of a wheel and radial vanes (Fig. 2- B). The fluid feed is introduced into the
drying chamber by means of a spinning disc or wheel. When the feed is directed to the wheel periphery, the
liquid feed accelerates and acquires the peripheral speed of the wheel. The liquid is atomized into fine
spherical droplets as soon as the thin film leaves off the edge of the wheel (Broadhead et al., 1992).
c) Two-fluid nozzle atomization
In two-fluid nozzle atomizer (Fig. 2-C), liquid feed and the compressed air (or steam) are the two fluids
which are mixed internally or externally. The energy of the compressed gas is utilized to atomize the liquid. In
internal mixing, the drying air is rotated within the nozzle and comes into the contact with the feed liquid
within the nozzle.
d) Ultrasonic atomization
In this method, a liquid is placed on a rapidly vibrating surface at ultrasonic frequencies. At sufficiently
high amplitude, the liquid spreads becomes unstable and collapses resulting in the formation of very fine
droplets.

2) Droplet-hot air contact

The second step of spray drying process is
mixing of the atomized droplets with the heated
air (or inert gas) stream which facilitates the
evaporation of water (or solvent) and produces
dried powders. For ideal drying process, the final
product should be sufficiently dry before
contacting the chamber wall so that almost all the
final product could be collected. The contact of
the atomized droplets and the drying medium (air
or inert gas) can be brought about in different
ways. In co-current design (Fig. 3-A) the feed and
the drying medium move within the chamber in
the same direction. This arrangement is preferred
for drying the heat sensitive materials because the
wet product comes in contact with the driest
medium while the progressively dried product
comes into contact with the progressively cooled
drying medium. In counter-current design, the
atomized droplets and the drying medium enter
the drying chamber from opposite directions (Fig.
3-B). In this process, the hottest air comes in
contact with the driest particles which may result
in unacceptable heat damage in the product
(Masters, 1997). A combination of co- and
counter-current method is developed to harness
the benefits of both the methods of droplet-air contact so that superior product quality can be achieved (Fig. 3-C).
3) Evaporation of water or solvent from droplets
When the feed droplets come into the contact with hot air, evaporation of water takes place and the dry powder
particles are produced. During evaporation, the temperature and vapour pressure gradients between the droplets
and the drying medium are established such a way that the heat transfer takes place from the drying medium to the
droplets while the mass transfer takes place from the droplets to the drying medium. When the drying medium and
droplets come in contact with each other, heat transfer causes increase of the droplet temperature until a constant
value is achieved (in the vicinity of wet bulb temperature) where most of water (or solvent) evaporates from the
droplets. When the dried particles exit the drying chamber, their temperature is close to the dryer outlet
temperature. In practice, as soon as the hot air contacts the feed droplets, the drying takes place almost
instantaneously and rapid evaporation occurs from the surface of each droplet.
4) Recovery of powders
The final step in the spray drying process is product recovery. It involves separation of the dry product from
the drying medium which is often accomplished using a cyclone and a bag filter placed outside the drying chamber
(Fig. 1). The ease or difficulty of separation of particles from the drying medium depends on the density of
particles, size of the particles and their settling velocity within the cyclone. Larger particles are collected at the
base of the drying chamber while the smaller ones are recovered at the cyclone and the bag filter.
References :
Broadhead, J, Edmond Rouan, S. K. and Rhodes, C.T. (1992). The spray drying of pharmaceuticals. Drug
Development and Industrial Pharmacy, 18(11-12): 1169-1206.
Chavez, B.E. and Ledeboer, A.M. (2007). Drying of probiotics: optimization of formulation and process to enhance
storage survival. Drying Technology, 25 (7-8): 1193.1201.
Masters, K. (1997). Spray Dryers. In C. G. J. Baker (Ed.), Industrial drying of foods. London, UK: Blackie
Academic and Professional.