GEA Niro Spray Dryers and the Technology of Spray Drying

GEA Niro is the world leader in spray dryers, designing and manufacturing systems of all sizes for every process industry application. We can provide an individual spray dryer or a complete process line, including all associated equipment. We offer a complete range of sizes and capacities, from custom-designed large process lines to laboratory and pilot units.

For specific details on our equipment, see the following:

• Chemical industry spray dryers
• Food & dairy spray dryers
• Pharmaceutical spray dryers
• Pilot and laboratory scale spray dryers

Large GEA Niro dairy spray dryer followed by a GEA Niro VIBRO-FLUIDIZER®.		The GEA Niro FILTERMAT™ belt and spray dryer is designed to dry products with high carbohydrate and fat content as conventional spray dryers will fail due to powder deposits in the drying chamber, air ducts with powder loaded air and cyclones.		GEA Niro TALL FORM DRYER™ - TFD™ (a.k.a. nozzle tower spray dryer) for polymer production.

More than 10,000 spray dryers installed Worldwide

No one knows more about industrial spray drying than GEA Niro. GEA Niro has data gained data and experience from more than 75 years and has a reference list of more than 10,000 spray dryers. GEA Niro has 30,000 spray drying test reports from our dedicated drying test centers, and we are equipped to engineer the properties you want into your products as well as the processes needed to produce them.

Spray drying technology

Spray drying is the most widely used industrial process for particle formation and drying. It is well suited for continuous production of dry solids in powder, granulate or agglomerate form from a liquid feed. Spray drying is ideal when the end-product must comply to exact quality standards including properties such as: particle size distribution, residual moisture content, bulk density and particle morphology.

Spray dryer installed in a food ingredients production facility.		GEA Niro cGMP compliant spray dryer at a pharmaceutical production facility (the powder collection area is visible in the background).

The spray drying process

Spray drying starts with the atomization of a liquid feedstock into a spray of droplets. The droplets are put in contact with hot air in a drying chamber. The sprays (atomization) are produced by either rotary atomizers or spray nozzle atomizers. The evaporation of the liquid from the droplets and formation of dry particles proceed under controlled temperature and airflow conditions. The powder is continuously discharged from the drying chamber and recovered from the exhaust gases using a cyclone or a bag filter.

A spray dryer consists of:

• a feed pump
• an atomizer
• an air heater
• an air disperser
• a drying chamber
• contraption for powder recovery
• cleaning systems for the exhaust air

GEA Niro spray dryer test facility in Columbia, MD

We can assist you with all your spray drying projects, whether you are conducting R&D spray drying, interested in small-scale spray drying, or full an industrial spray drying production facility. We offer powder engineering solutions and proof of concept through laboratory and pilot-plant testing. We also possess an unmatched scale-up experience and global project execution according to your specifications. The GEA Niro spray drying technology center, located at our Columbia, MD (US headquarters), is one of the best of its kind in the world for customer product testing.

For additional information about the technology of spray drying (i.e. the atomization and the typical spray drying airflow patterns) please access our Spray Drying Technology page.