Droplet size measurements for spray dryer scale-up

This study was dedicated to facilitate scale-up in spray drying from an atomization standpoint. The purpose was to investigate differences in operating conditions between a pilot and a production scale nozzle. The intension was to identify the operating ranges in which the two nozzles produced similar droplet size distributions. Furthermore, method optimization and validation were also covered. Externally mixing two-fluid nozzles of similar designs were used in this study. Both nozzles are typically used in commercially available spray dryers, and they have been characterized with respect to droplet size distributions as a function of liquid type, liquid flow rate, atomization gas flow rate, liquid orifice diameter, and atomization gas orifice diameter. All droplet size measurements were carried out by using the Malvern Spraytec with nozzle operating conditions corresponding to typical settings for spray drying. This gave droplets with Sauter Mean Diameters less than 40 microm and typically 5-20 microm. A model previously proposed by Mansour and Chigier was used to correlate the droplet size to the operating parameters. It was possible to make a correlation for water incorporating the droplet sizes for both the pilot scale and the production scale nozzle. However, a single correlation was not able to account properly for the physical properties of the liquid to be atomized. Therefore, the droplet size distributions of ethanol could not be adequately predicted on the basis of the water data. This study has shown that it was possible to scale up from a pilot to production scale nozzle in a systematic fashion. However, a prerequisite was that the nozzles were geometrically similar. When externally mixing two-fluid nozzles are used as atomizers, the results obtained from this study could be a useful guideline for selecting appropriate operating conditions when scaling up the spray-drying process.