Simulating Industrial Spray-Drying Operations Using a Reaction Engineering Approach and a Modified Desorption Method

A predictive tool using a thermodynamic approach has recently been developed to determine several important gas-feed parameters for industrial spray-drying processes. In this approach, a desorption behavior of materials was evaluated and the behavior was linked with overall heat and mass balances over the dryer. Using the desorption behavior of materials and the overall heat and mass balances, a spray-drying software SD²P® was designed at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) in France. The SD²P® software allows the prediction of optimal inlet drying air temperatures with acceptable accuracy (95–99% accuracy) for spray drying of dairy products. In order to predict detailed quality parameters and stickiness behavior of a product during processing, the reaction engineering approach (REA) was combined with a modified desorption method. A traditional experimental setup is replaced with a new setup, which is described in this article. Drying kinetics parameters were predicted using this new setup. Important gas-feed parameters were predicted using the 1D simulation-based software and compared with SD²P® predictions and are reported here.