Project

Particle morphology development of food materials during drying

PhD defended by Isabel Siemons at Wageningen University on 16 December 2021

Spray drying is a widely adopted technology in food industry to make stable agglomerated powders. Despite its widespread use, the operation and design of spray dryers is usually obtained by trial-and error approaches as the underlying physical phenomena related to particle morphology and agglomeration behavior are not well understood. Therefore, two universities (Wageningen University and Delft University) aim at developing a better understanding of the drying kinetics and agglomeration of particles during spray drying. The approach chosen is multidisciplinary and includes experimental work involving well defined (single) droplet drying and agglomeration studies, soft matter theory development and numerical modelling.