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Fluid bed technology is used in various applications especially for agglomeration of powder or for encapsulation of tailor-made products with functional coatings.
The contract manufacturer IPC International Process Center in Dresden, an associated company of the Glatt group, offers such technologies as contract manufacturing service since many years with growing success.
In addition to batch processing IPC has installed continuous production facilities at the beginning of this year. Besides the well known agglomeration and pelletization processes, continuous fluid bed processing allows for spray granulation. With this technology granules or pellets can be made directly
from liquid raw material. The products are compact and dust free granules with a mean diameter between 100 µm and 3 mm. Thus spray granulation is an alternative to spray dryers, the conventional process to dry liquids.
The patented design of the processing chamber of the ProCell, a spouted bed unit by Glatt, allows to work with little material in the process, resulting in short residence times. By this means spherical, dust-free and homogeneous pellets can be formed with little thermal stress to the product.
The spraying solution is layered on seed particles or powder until the required particle size is reached. The product quality depends on the process parameter as well as on the recipe of the sprayed liquid. After screening off the target fraction as product, all oversized particles are milled and
returned to the process together with the undersized fraction. This recycling ensures not only a high yield. Generating seeds in the process means also that no solid raw material is needed and the granules can be made from liquid raw material only.
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