A spray-drying plant for bio-based products
GEA
This company recently supplied a turnkey plant for the spray drying of lignosulfonate in Norway (photo). The solution also includes a new silo for feeding stored powder materials into the plant’s packaging system and a large wet scrubber for de-dusting. At this plant, 25 ton/h of lignosulfonates is directly fed into a rotary atomizer and spray dried. The final product is separated in two groups of consecutive cyclones. The second newly developed cyclones CEE (Cyclone Extra Efficiency) offer a higher separation efficiency, which increases the yield and reduces emissions. In real-world tests, the CEE powder separation efficiency was verified as being considerably higher than the efficiency of standard cyclones. Part of the spray drying plant is the large wet scrubber for de-dusting. The Venturi scrubber uses water to clean the exhaust gases from the spray dryer before they are released into the environment. The scrubbing water is circulated and fed continuously to a falling-film evaporator for concentration and recovery of valuable substances. The condensate is returned to the spray dryer as process water, and thus increases the total product yield while the concentrate is discharged. The evaporator is designed for 2 h/ton of scrubbing water and energetically optimized by heating through mechanical vapor recompression. Hall 3, Stand 231 — GEA, Düsseldorf, Germany