Throughout a facility tour at MDG you’ll walk past different sizes of the same equipment, one example, specifically of interest to many plant companies, is the 6-foot pilot spray dryer that stares up at a 34-foot electric production spray dryer. Flexibility in spray drying equipment size offers two intentional benefits: affordable trials and high-yield spore production.
What is Spray Drying?
MDG’s Pilot Spray Dryer
Spray drying is used in markets such as custom fermentation, plant health, animal agriculture, wastewater, I&I, aquaculture, human probiotics, landfill, and bioremediation. This process involves drying liquid droplets into a fine powder. A nozzle that turns a stream of liquid into a fine mist allows for droplets ranging in micron sizes to be achieved and produce fine particles as the water droplets dry. Fine particle sizes are required for applying product through in field spraying applications making it a popular drying method for agriculture products.
Affordable Trials
Field trials are a common step in bringing a new strain or product to market. Field trials require a small amount of high-quality product and bringing a product to market requires high amounts of high-quality product. While that may seem like stating the obvious, few manufacturers are set-up to execute on it.
To keep field trials affordable, MDG runs products for field trials through the pilot spray dryer due to quantity of product grown from small fermentation batches. The pilot spray dryer allows for a faster turn-around and less cost to our partners compared to the alternative production dryer.
Delivering the Highest Yield
Every strain of bacteria is different. To produce the highest yield, we need to understand the optimal conditions to grow the strain, and the optimal conditions for drying. Downstream production should not be overlooked when discussing strain optimization. At MDG, we gain information from the pilot dryer before moving to the production dryer to optimize spray drying processes for the 5,000 and 10,000-liter fermentation batches. And soon, 50,000-liter fermentation batches.
Whether we’re manufacturing product for a field-trial or a full production run, we’re in the interest of reducing costs, producing quality yields, and getting you product faster. The equipment investments that may seem small are proving to make the biggest difference.
Contact Us to discuss your upcoming trials or spray drying questions.
