Bulk food ingredients, dairy, pharmaceutical, and chemical processors alike usually deploy some method of size reduction to get their dried powders into a specific form.
They are looking to create a powder that is flowable, free from agglomerations, and with the correct particle size distribution ready for the end user.
The Challenge for Nutraceuticals and Foods
Manufacturers of Nutraceuticals, Functional Foods, and Nutritional Supplements often find that process material discharged from batch and continuous drying operations, are in most cases unsuitable for the subsequent following stage of processing.
Materials that have been drum-dried to a thin film exhibit very low density and the film cannot be effectively packaged or used in downstream operations.
Continuous drying in spray driers often produces powdered materials with a density that is too low to fit into their desired volume package. In addition, irregular and oversized particles are often formed during the starting and stopping operations.
Similarly, dried material from batch fluid bed driers, lyophilizers (freeze driers), tray driers, rotary driers, filter driers, and tumble dryers typically cannot be used ‘as-dried’ due to aggregates and agglomerations that have formed during the drying process.
Milling Food and Nutraceuticals
The Quadro® Overdriven Comil® and FlexSift® are widely used for post-drying conditioning of material. Each milling technology serves a specific need but both ensure equally sized particles – ready for the next processing step.
They can both be used as discrete unit operations or integrated in line with upstream and downstream equipment.
Sanitary flanges are standard on the inlet and discharge points resulting in contained processing (capable of OEL < 1 µg/m3).
The Comil® and FlexSift® are often delivered with a portable base which means they can be placed under multiple drying stations whenever needed and they are designed to operate under vacuum conditions (pneumatic conveying adaptors can be added at any time).
The Results
The Quadro Comil® and FlexSift® are easy to deploy and maintain and can be flood-fed or equipped with dosing or isolation valves.
The small footprint and high capacity throughput ensure the product is correctly sized at a fraction of the time it takes for other traditional technologies.
Learn more about Particle Size Reduction, Milling Equipment, and Technology with our knowledge base, and read more about manufacturing nutraceuticals.
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