Applications > Spray Drying
Enhance Your Spray Drying Performance with Advanced Particle Analysis
Spray drying is vital in numerous industries, converting liquids into powders with precision. By carefully adjusting operational parameters, manufacturers can produce powders with precision. This allows for controlling particle properties such as size, shape, density, and morphology. With the help of advanced particle analysis based on images, you can optimize your production efficiency, increase product quality, and reduce variability between batches.
Challenges in Spray Drying
Finding the optimal operational parameters for a spray dryer is not trivial. A liquid droplet in a spray dryer can follow one of many morphological pathways, resulting in various particle morphologies, as shown in Figure 1. By slightly adjusting the operational parameters, the same raw material can be spray-dried into significantly different particle sizes, shapes, and densities. These physical particle properties can significantly impact product quality, handling, and production efficiency.
Without a direct optimization of the operational parameters and monitoring of the spray-dried powder properties during production, one might experience challenges such as:
- Inconsistent particle size distribution.
- Varying particle density and morphology.
- Suboptimal energy efficiency and throughput.
- Unwanted agglomeration & scale/deposit formation.
Solving the Challenges with 3D Scanning and Advanced Image Analysis
Solving the operational challenges of a spray drying process is challenging without the ability to accurately characterize the product’s critical properties. With our 3D scanning technology, FluidScope™, it is possible to rapidly analyze large quantities of particles without sacrificing detail. Combined with advanced image analysis algorithms, it is possible to obtain the following particle properties in a single analysis:
- Particle size distribution (PSD)
- Particle shape distributions
- Particle morphology distributions
- Particle opacity distributions
- Relative particle densities
This technology comes with the benefits of:
- Real-time process optimization: Allows for on-the-fly adjustments directly in the production environment.
- No calibration: Continuous instrument utilization without the need for product-specific calibrations.
- No cleaning: No wasted time between measurements.
- Fast analysis: Comprehensive analysis in less than 2 minutes.
The scanning technology enables a particle-level analysis. This means that the physical properties of each individual particle are measured and can subsequently be used to quantify product properties such as particle size distribution and shape distributions. High-resolution images of the analyzed particles back up all the measured particle properties and thereby serve as an intuitive explanation if particle properties change during production.
Furthermore, grouping the particles directly based on their properties is possible. For instance, it is possible to classify the particles based on their morphology (see examples in Figure 4), providing a quantitative metric that can reveal even subtle differences between samples where particle sizes are similar. This allows the spray-drying process to be controlled with high precision, ensuring that the spray-dried powder has the correct physical and chemical properties.
This enables highly specific optimizations. For instance, if you want to produce a powder with a low bulk density, high dissolution rate, and minimal fines/fragments formation, you can adjust the process conditions to maximize the fraction of inflated particles. An example of this can be seen in Figure 5, where Figure 6 shows how the results always are documented through high-resolution images of the particles.
Applications in Various Industries
Every spray drying process differs, and the ideal product properties will vary from application to application. Thanks to the flexibility of the ParticleTech powder analysis solutions, it is easy to set up an analysis protocol that provides the critical necessary information for your production. Some examples are listed below.
Pharmaceutical productions
Particle size and particle density are crucial in pharmaceutical production to ensure high dosage accuracy and consistent dissolution characteristics. This is particularly critical in producing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for inhalers, tablets, and injectables.
Food productions
Particle size and degree of aggregation are critical in producing instant food powders. This includes milk powder, coffee, and flavorings. Controlling the degree of agglomeration yields an improved consistency of product flowability and dissolution characteristics.
Chemical productions
Consistent particle size, shape, and morphology are essential for the reactivity and appearance of specialty chemicals and fine powders. This includes spray-dried battery materials, pigments, ceramic powders, etc.
Optimize your Manufacturing at Different Scales
Each stage of a manufacturing cycle brings challenges and will naturally have a different focus.
ParticleTech Analyser software has been designed with this in mind to ensure a common thread that helps you from the initial process development to full-scale production. In a single click, you can switch the software between an advanced interface for process development and a simplified interface for production monitoring.
The advanced interface allows for in-depth analysis of how process parameters impact the particle properties and setting up measurement protocols customized to a specific production process.
The production interface simplifies the analysis procedure and lets you analyze a sample in just 3 clicks. This interface utilizes the measurement protocols to ensure that only the critical data is presented, making it easier to focus on optimizing.
Process development
Developing a new spray-drying process can be a time-consuming endeavor. This includes performing costly experiments to find optimal operational parameters, nozzle design, solvent, dryer design, etc.
The rapid analysis lets you quickly measure how the various process parameters impact the critical particle properties, such as particle size, shape, density, and morphology.
Furthermore, an analysis can be performed on just a few milligrams of sample, allowing for early testing in the manufacturing cycle – even for manufacturing pharmaceutical products.
Process scale-up and production
When scaling up a spray-drying process to production scale, it is not uncommon to experience changes to the particle size distribution of the spray-dried powder. One might observe new challenges, such as aggregation and scaling.
ParticleTech Powder Optimizer makes sure you quickly become aware of these challenges. It also enables you to resolve them with on-the-fly adjustments to the operational parameters of the spray-drying process.
Finally, it enables operators to quickly react to variations in the feed composition, ensuring that the product properties remain within specification.
Get your spray dried powder analyzed today
Send us a sample, and we will show you which new insights ParticleTech Solutions can provide.
Contact us at info@particletech.dk or request a free sample analysis by following this link.
