Advantages & Disadvantages of Fluid Bed Dryer in Pharmaceutical Industry

Fluid bed dryer plays an integral role in the pharmaceutical industry. This is due to the many advantages that it offers over the conventional drying techniques.

So far, a number fluidized bed drying studies have established that it is the most reliable and dependable technique in the pharmaceutical industry.

In this article, I am going to explore all the advantages and disadvantages of fluid bed dryer. With this information, you can comfortably choose the right pharmaceutical fluid bed dryer.

Advantages of Fluid Bed Dryer

The available fluidized bed dryers offer a wide range of benefits depending on their unique design. Below are the main advantages of fluidized bed dryers in the pharmaceutical industry:

1. Fluidized Bed Dryers Guarantee Fast and Homogeneous Drying

I am sure this is what everyone is looking for. But before, I explore the details about this; you need to know the working principle of fluid bed dryer.

Below is a video that explains everything about this equipment:

What have you noticed?

The hot gas/air flows into the system with a velocity greater than the setting velocity of particles. This causes the particles to be suspended in the hot air or gas.

In this fluidized state, the particle you intend to dry is actually in direct contact with the hot gas or air. Therefore, drying can be done within 10 to 40 minutes.

Furthermore, the uniform drying is due to the fact that every particle of the solid is surrounded by hot air or gas.

Whether you opt for a vertical or horizontal fluidized dryer, the working principle will still remain the same.

2. Fluid Bed Dryer is Suitable for Heat Sensitive Products

Some powders and granules degrade or lose essential properties when subjected to extreme heat or temperatures.

This makes the conventional drying systems unsuitable for such products.

The modern fluidized bed designs have sensitive and effective sensors that monitor all essential parameters during material drying process.

Even with the high rate of mass and heat transfer, you can still control the basic parameters that affect quality of the final product.

Fluid Bed Dryer Control Panel

With this control panel, you can easily monitor the temperature and air flow settings.

That is, with the modern control system, you can adjust all parameters of the inlet air flow.

3. Fluidized Bed Ensures Efficiency in Material Drying

The fluid bed dryer working principle is such that the particles are dried individually as opposed to the entire bed. Remember, the hot air or gas surrounds all particles and this ensures efficiency in the material drying process.

Hot air or gas reaches every surface of the particles

This guarantees 99.9% efficiency in the drying process while saving thermal heat.

Normally, you’ll find that the thermal efficiency of fluid dryers is 3 times greater than those of other conventional drying systems.

4. Handling Fluidized Bed Dryer is Easy and Less Labor Intensive

A number of fluid bed dryer designs are such that you can conveniently relocate them from one point to another. This makes handling these machines easy and less labor intensive.

Furthermore, there are those that have wheels, making them portable material processing equipment.

A Fluid Bed Dryer with Wheels

This makes fluid bed dryer a perfect choice for most laboratory and R&D applications.

5. Fluid Bed Dryer Designs Come in a Wide Range of Capacities and Sizes

Whether you’re in pharmaceutical, laboratory or R&D facility; there is that fluidized dryer design that will suit your unique application requirements. For instance, we have a wide range of fluid bed dryer equipment optimized for different applications.

SaintyCo Fluid Bed Dryer Equipment

Clearly, you can choose a machine that meets your material drying needs. Like for our case, you can choose from FG Fluid Bed Dryer from FG5 to FG500.

6. Fluid Bed Dryer has Low Maintenance Cost hence, Reduces Downtime

This is quite clear from the modular and cGMP compliant designs of our fluid bed dryers for pharmaceutical machines. The equipment is made from high quality stainless steel.

Ideally, you don’t have to worry about product contamination, dust pollution, rust or tedious cleaning process.

Furthermore, with the modular design, you can easily replace or modify this machine to suit your unique applications.

NOTE: In case you have to modify our machines, kindly contact our technical team. Remember, hiring untrained personnel will make your warranty invalid.

7. No Hot Spots on the Final Products

The hot spot is a common phenomenon in most drying equipment. This is because the products are in direct contact with the drying surface.

Fluid Bed Material Processing Chamber

All materials are suspended within the material drying chamber.

Additionally, you can choose the right capacity of the fluid dryer where there is an excellent mixing of both the particles and air.

Remember, in other drying applications, you cannot use high temperatures since this may cause damage to the product.

However, for the case of fluid bed dryer, you can use high drying temperature.

Again, due to the unique fluid bed dryer working principle; you can use this machine to dry thermolabile products. This is one of the main reasons why fluidization is common in most pharmaceutical industries.

8. Fluid Bed Dryer Is Suitable for both Continuous & Batch Material Processing

Do you need a drying machine for both batch and continuous material processing?

Well, I can recommend a fluidized bed dryer since it is a machine that can handle both processes without necessarily doing expensive adjustments or modifications.

Apart from these 8 advantages of fluid bed dryer, other includes:

• No risk of soluble substances migrating
• Reduced dust pollution
• Small size with high production capacity
• High rates of moisture removal

Even though a fluidized bed dryer may offer all these advantages; it may not be suitable for all pharmaceutical applications. It is for this reason that we may advise you to consider other alternatives.

Besides, even when you adopt fluid bed dryer, there are certain challenges that you’ll have to deal with.

Disadvantages of Fluid Bed Dryer

Whenever you are using fluid bed dryer in the pharmaceutical industry, you’ll experience some challenges. These disadvantages include:

1. A Possibility of Product Loss

In fluidized state, particles are subjected to a turbulent state. In such circumstances, there is a high possibility of product loss.

Currently, as a fluid bed dryer manufacturer, we try to eliminate this problem by installing precise control mechanisms.

2. Chances of Electrostatic Build Up May be High

Furthermore, a vigorous movement may generate electrostatic charges. This is a common phenomenon when drying organic powders.

This is the main reason why our modern fluid bed dryer for pharmaceutical industry come with electrical earthing.

3. Drying Sticky Material is Quite Difficult

The fluidization principle, which a fluid bed dryer depends on, requires a free movement of particles. Therefore, sticky or adhesive materials will not move freely, hence it will be nearly impossible to use this equipment.

Ideally, these are the main challenges you may face when intending to use this equipment. Others challenges may include:

• Possibility of high pressure drop
• Increased gas or hot air handling mechanism
• Non uniform product quality
• Poor fluidization

The good news is that most of our machines do not have these problems.

We have incorporated various automatic control systems that make the machine to adjust seamlessly to any change in operating conditions.

Conclusion

In short, I highly recommend fluid bed dryer in pharmaceutical applications due to these numerous advantages and predictable performance.

However, it is important that you choose a suitable machine that matches the exact requirements of your applications.

For inquiries, feel free to contact our technical team.

References

• Handbook of Industrial Drying– By Arun S. Mujumdar
• A Study of Efficient Drying Parameters for Bed Dryers– By C. Tremblay
• Experimental Evaluation of a Batch Hot Air Fluidized Bed Dryer– Source: ijmer
• Fluidized Bed Dryer– By: Saraswathi.B