Monodisperse Droplet Generators as Potential Atomizers for Spray Drying Technology

Spray drying is a widely used unit operation for manufacturing powders of different characteristics. Many technological improvements have been made in the last few decades, and a great amount of research work is still being conducted. Recently, the hybrid spray-drying technique was reported, which combines the ink-jet technology with spray drying in order to produce particles of uniform characteristics.[ 1-4 Patel , K.C. ; Chen , X.D. ; Lin , S.X.Q. Development of a laboratory ink-jet spray dryer . Chemeca 2006 , Auckland , New Zealand , September 17–20, 2006 (CD-Rom) . Patel , K.C. ; Chen , X.D. Drying of aqueous lactose solutions in a single stream dryer (S2D) . Transactions of the IChemE: Food and Bioproduct Processing 2007 , accepted . Patel , K.C. ; Chen , X.D. Production of spherical and uniform-sized particles using a laboratory ink-jet spray dryer . Asia-Pacific Journal of Chemical Engineering 2007 , 2 ( 5 ), 415 – 430 . Patel , K.C. ; Wu , W.D. ; Chen , X.D. Review on generation of monodisperse sprays for manufacturing micro-size uniform particles using a spray drying technology . In Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Drying Conference , Hong Kong , China , August 13–15, 2007 . ] The monodisperse droplet generators (MDGs) have certain features that make them attractive for use as atomizers in spray-drying operations. In this article, a comprehensive introduction to a variety of monodisperse droplet generators is provided. The advantages and limitations of these generators are discussed. The fundamental equations for predictions of the average droplet size are summarized. The discussion given in this study is aimed at the development of a hybrid technology that marries a suitable MDG with the existing spray-dryer technique (yet with some modifications) to manufacture the product with uniform characteristics containing micro- to nanosized particles.