Conference Dates

June 19-24, 2016

Abstract

The most frequently used technique for dehydration of dairy products is spray drying. This is an effective method to preserve biological products as it does not involve prolong exposure of materials to severe heat treatment. Due to the variety and complexity of the concentrates to be dried, a more rigorous understanding of spray-drying based on physico-chemical and thermodynamic properties is necessary. At the same time, the current state of the art did not allow easy determination of the parameters of spray-drying of dairy products prior to drying, except from performing several complex and expensive experiments with pilot-scale spray-dryer. Nevertheless, recent advances in the understanding of product behavior toward water transfer with the development of a desorption method makes it possible to give several answers to the following question: What is the best strategy to anticipate the behavior of concentrate toward drying and to improve the process, the economy and the quality of the dairy powders?

The strategical approach can be developed on the knowledge of the thermodynamic parameters of the spray dryer coupled to physico-chemical characteristics of the concentrate. The software SD2P® (Spray Drying Parameters Simulation & Determination) developed by Schuck et al. (2009) is a way, among others, to predict the value of these parameters when they are not known. The combined results provide more precise determination of spray-drying parameters (including inlet/outlet air temperature, mass/powder flow rate, powder temperature, etc.), powder state during spray-drying (stickiness) and the cost of spray-drying with respect to weather conditions. Several cases will be presented to show the interest of this strategy in order to anticipate the spray-drying parameters and the powder behavior.

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