Paulo Ventura

Efficient recovery of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), chemical substances or food powders after drying applications such as sprayand fluid bed dryingis frequently a problem. The same problem occurs in many milling and micronization applications.

The preferred way to recover these sensitive and expensive products is with cyclone collectors due to their direct powder capture. Unlike bag filters or wet scrubbers, cyclones minimize filter or product contamination and product cross contamination and can easily handle a wide range of operating temperature, pressure and moisture conditions.

Spray Drying | General Arrangement

Usual spray drying arrangements (single point, two point and closed cycle) include a high efficiency cyclone and a bag filter.

The cyclone serves the purpose of separating and collecting the dried powder originated in the spray drying chamber. In pharmaceutical/API powders, the fraction of product escaping to the bag filter is not considered as first grade product, and thus seen as losses. The main reasons for this are contamination with filter fibers, product cross contamination and risk of heat degradation.

For fine powders with a median diameter in volume (MVD) of less than 5 µm, losses due to low cyclone efficiency can rise to more than 25 %.

Efficient recovery of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), chemical substances or food powders after drying applications such as spray and fluid bed drying is frequently a problem. The same problem occurs in many milling and micronization applications.

The preferred way to recover these sensitive products is with cyclone collectors due to their direct powder capture. Unlike bag filters or wet scrubbers, cyclones minimize filter or product contamination and product cross contamination and can easily handle a wide range of operating temperature, pressure and moisture conditions.

Spray Drying | General Arrangement

Usual spray drying arrangements (single point, two point and closed cycle) include a high efficiency cyclone and a bag filter.

The cyclone serves the purpose of separating and collecting the dried powder originated in the spray-drying chamber. For some chemical powders, the fraction of product escaping to the bag filter is not considered as first grade product, and thus seen as losses. The main reasons for this are contamination with filter fibers, product cross contamination and risk of heat degradation.

For fine powders with a median diameter in volume (MVD) of less than 5 µm, losses due to low cyclone efficiency can rise to more than 25 %.

Efficient recovery of active pharmaceutical ingredients(APIs), chemical substances or food powders after drying applications such as spray and fluid bed drying is frequently a problem. The same problem occurs in many milling and micronization applications.

The preferred way to recover these sensitive products is with cyclone collectors due to their direct powder capture. Unlike bag filters or wet scrubbers, cyclones minimize filter or product contamination and product cross contamination and can easily handle a wide range of operating temperature, pressure and moisture conditions.

The current problem with cyclones is their low efficiency. And therefore, when necessary, cyclones have to be complemented with expensive specialized bag filters or wet scrubbers to increase yield or to avoid emissions to the atmosphere.

Client's needs include a cyclone system that dramatically increases powder yield, is easy and fast to clean and is efficient enough to comply with regulatory PM limits, thus avoiding the use of secondary filters.

Spray Drying | General Arrangement

Usual spray drying arrangements (single point, two point and closed cycle) include a high efficiency cyclone and a bag filter.
The cyclone serves the purpose of separating and collecting the dried powder originated in the spray-drying chamber. In pharmaceutical/API powders, the fraction of product escaping to the bag filter is not considered as first grade product, and thus seen as losses. The main reasons for this are contamination with filter fibers, product cross contamination and risk of heat degradation.
For fine powders with a median diameter in volume (MVD) of less than 5 µm, losses due to low cyclone efficiency can rise to more than 25 %.

 NANOPARTICLES

An increasingly high number of industries, from the fine chemicals to the cosmetics industry, are investing on the design and production of nanoparticles, such as metal oxides, in specific reactors. There is a need to recover these very fine powders from the exhaust streams often at high temperature, pressure and moisture.

The very fine particle size precludes the use of mechanical collectors by themselves. The main problem of using barrier filters is product hold-up and breakage of the nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles | General Arrangement

Nanoparticles can be produced by an array of fully scaled patent protected technologies. The traditional and most common manufacturing methods are plasma based used to produce simple and complex, multi-component mixed metal oxides.

Dried nanoparticles are usually collected with barrier filters or our Electrostatic Recyclone that separate and collect the dried powder produced in the plasma reactor.

 MINERAL PROCESSING

In the mineral processing industries, such as calcination or catalysts production, solid intermediates and products are regularly handled in the fine powder form.

There is a need to recover these powders from the exhaust streams of calciners, fluid bed dryers, incinerators, and storage silos, often at critical temperature conditions.