Drying
• Drying is a mass transfer process consisting of the
removal of water or another solvent by evaporation
from a solid, semi-solid or liquid.
• This process is often used as a final production step
before selling or packaging products.
• Needed for the purposes of preservation and storage,
reduction in cost of transportation, etc.
• Most common and diverse operation with over 100
types of dryers in industrial use
• Competes with distillation as the most energy intensive
operation.
Drying particle
Energy Input by Moisture Output by
• Conduction • Liquid diffusion
• Convection • Vapor diffusion
• Radiation • Capillary flow (Permeability)
• Microwave and • Knudsen diffusion (Mean
Radio Frequency free path < pore dia.)
Fields • Surface diffusion
• Combined mode • Poiseuille flow
• Combination of above
Parameters affecting drying:
• Physical properties of solid/liquid system
• Intrinsic properties of the solute
• Conditions of drying environment
• Heat transfer parameters
Methods of Drying
• Natural air drying
• Solar Drying
• Application of hot air
• Indirect or contact drying
• Freeze drying or lyophilization
• Supercritical drying or Superheated steam drying
Major types of dryers used for drying
Vacuum-Tray Dryer:
• It is the most commonly used batch dryer and used mainly for drying of high
grade, temperature and oxygen sensitive products.
• Vacuum Tray Dryer is highly suitable for drying hygroscopic substances, which
are dried to very low residual moisture, content level.
• They are box-shaped and loaded and unloaded via a door. Inside are several
heating plates mounted one above the other on which the product is placed in
trays.
Spray Dryer:
• Spray-drying is a rapid, continuous, cost-effective, reproducible
and scalable process for the production of dry powders from a
fluid material.
• In Spray dryer, the material to be dried is sprayed as a fine mist
into a hot-air chamber and falls to the bottom as dry powder.
1) Atomization
2) Droplet-to-particle
conversion
3) Particle collection
Advances in Colloid and Interface Science, 2015
• The period of heating is very brief and so nutritional and
functional damage are avoided.
• Dried powder consists of hollow particles of low density; widely
applied to many foods and pharmaceuticals.
• Spray-drying is a technique widely used in the pharmaceutical,
chemical, materials, cosmetic and food industries.
• It is very appealing under laboratory and industrial setups
because it is rapid, continuous, reproducible, single-step, and
thus, scalable without major modifications
• Expensive but preferable for heat-sensitive materials such as
foods and pharmaceuticals.
• In comparison to other drying processes commonly used in
industry such as freeze-drying, it is shorter and cheaper because it
does not involve deep cooling, usually associated with great
energy consumption.
Rotary Dryer
• Rotary dryers are one of the most common types of industrial dryer, utilized
for large quantities of material with particles of size 10 mm or larger.
• Typical rotary dryer consist of cylindrical shell made of steel plates slightly
inclined to horizontal to assist the transportation of the wet material fed for
the processing.
• Shell is typically 0.3-5 m in diameter, 5-90 m in length and rotating at 1-5.
• Rotary dryer shell tube acts as body to transfer the wet feedstock
and number of steam heated tubes are placed symmetrically around
the perimeter and rotate with it.
• Wet material is fed into the upper end of dryer and the material
travels through it by virtue of rotation and slope of the shell and
dried product is picked as the lower end.
• The feed rate, speed of rotation of shell, the volume of heated air or
gases, and their temperature are so regulated such that by the time
material reaches to discharge point of rotary dryer it’s accurately
dried.
• The key classification of rotary dryers are as follows:
• Direct Rotary Dryer
• Direct rotary kiln
• Indirect steam-tube dryer
• Indirect rotary calciner
Application of Rotary Dryer:
Practically rotary dryers can be used for any in any industry for
drying such as:
• Food and Dairy Industry.
• Agriculture and Animal Feeds.
• Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industry.
• Ceramic Industry.
• Sand Industry.
• Rubber Industry.
• Foundry Industry.
• Wood and Paper Industry.
• Metal Industry
Advantages of Rotary Dryer
• Rotary dryers are less sensitive to particle size.
• It can accept the highest flue gases of any type of dryer.
• Low maintenance cost; thus economical.
• It has the greatest capacity than any type of dryer.
Disadvantages of Rotary dryer
• Excessive entrainment losses in the exist gas stream is possible
especially if the material contains extremely fine particles due
to the large gas volumes and high gas velocities that are usually
required.
Pneumatic Dryers
• Pneumatic Dryers are one of the most widely used Dryers in
recent times.
• Pneumatic/ Flash dryers are direct drying units and are known as
convective dryers.
• In pneumatic flash drying system,
particulate solids to be dried travels
through the drying duct along with
hot air and it get dried during
transport in a hot gas stream.
• Suitable for heat sensitive and easily
oxidized materials.
Applications of Pneumatic Dryers:
• Chemical
• Food
• Pharmaceutical
• Mining
• Ceramic
• Agriculture and Animal Feeds
• Paper & Wood and etc.
Freeze Drying
• Freeze drying, also known as lyophilisation or
cryodesiccation, is a low temperature dehydration process
that involves freezing the product.
• Useful for antibiotics, enzyme solutions & bacterial
suspensions.
Main dryer classification criteria
Criterion Types
Mode of operation Batch
Continuous*
Heat input‐type Convection*, conduction, radiation,
electromagnetic fields, combination of heat
transfer modes
Intermittent or continuous*
Adiabatic or non‐adiabatic
State of material in dryer Stationary
Moving, agitated, dispersed
Operating pressure Vacuum*
Atmospheric
Drying medium Air*
(convection) Superheated steam
Flue gases
Main dryer classification criteria
Criterion Types
Drying temperature Below boiling temperature*
Above boiling temperature
Below freezing point
Relative motion between Co‐current
drying medium and drying Counter‐current
solids Mixed flow
Number of stages Single*
Multi‐stage
Residence time Short (< 1 minute)
Medium (1 – 60 minutes)
Long (> 60 minutes)
* Most common in practice
Typical checklist for selection of industrial dryers
Physical form of feed Granular, particulate, sludge, crystalline, liquid, pasty,
suspension, solution, continuous sheets, planks,
odd‐shapes (small/large)
Sticky, lumpy
Average throughput kg/h (dry/wet); continuous
kg per batch (dry/wet)
Expected variation in
throughput (turndown
ratio)
Fuel choice Oil
Gas
Electricity
Pre‐ and post‐drying
operations
(if any)
For particulate feed Mean particle size
products Size distribution
Particle density
Bulk density
Rehydration properties
Storage and Packaging
• Storage is the safe keeping of products in condition (s)
that would maintain their best quality and quantity
until when they would be needed.
• Packaging is an aspect of post-production process that
deals with confinements in which manufactured
products are kept.
• Packaging may be done to give products better
appearance, for proper handling and transporting of
products, ease of marketing the products,
improvement of product quality etc.
The Packaging Cycle
Types of Packaging Materials
Materials Applications
Plastic • The most common packaging methods in industries is plastic.
Mainly resin.
Metal, e.g. • Aluminum is widely used for products such as sodas, beer, canned
aluminium goods and animal foods.
• Because of the high cost of using aluminum to package products,
most industries take donations of recycled canned goods to help
save money in their business.
Cardboard • Most products that are packaged in cardboard boxes are first
wrapped in another type of packaging such as bubble wrap or
foam.
Glass • Glass jars and bottles are highly used for numerous food and
beverage products including jam, honey, alcoholic beverages and
food items such as pickles and peppers.
Foam • Foam is not as common as other packaging methods, but is used
for a variety of household items like furniture, TV’s, glass or
anything else that may have sharp edges that could puncture
cardboard and plastic.
The Four Rs
The guiding principles for designing environmentally responsible
packaging developed in the early 1990s are embodied in the four Rs
hierarchy & are still valid today:
• Reduce Packaging design should use the minimum amount of
material consistent with fulfilling their basic function. A reduction
in material use will dimish furthers of reusing, recycling or
recovering other value.
• Reuse Where practical, containers or packaging components
should be reused.
• Recycle Where practical, packaging should be collected & the
materials recycled for further use.
• Recover Finally, before consigning packaging to a landfill, some
thought it should be given to possibly recovering other value
from waste.
PACKAGING: Choosing the most appropriate pack
BASIC REQUIREMENTS
• Protection • Commercial
– stability test conditions – image
– market
Compatibility requirements/trends
– dosing/patient compliance
Regulatory – security/tamper evidence
– manufacturing
– economics - COG
Legislation
– e.g. EC Packaging and Corporate
Packaging Waste Directive – Global Quality Policies
Packaging for Pharmaceutical Products
The quality of the packaging of pharmaceutical products plays a very
important role in the quality of such products. It must:
• protect against all adverse external influences that can alter the
properties of the product, e.g. moisture, light, oxygen and
temperature variations;
• protect against biological contamination;
• protect against physical damage;
• carry the correct information and identification of the product.
The kind of packaging and the materials used must be chosen in such a
way that:
• the packaging itself does not have an adverse effect on the product
(e.g. through chemical reactions, leaching of packaging materials or
absorption);
• the product does not have an adverse effect on the packaging,
changing its properties or affecting its protective function.
