Study on the influence of main factors on the performance of spray drying of licorice root extract

Abstract

Spray drying of liquid plant materials, including extracts, allows obtaining fine powders of high-quality final products, while eliminating overheating of the dried material at high intensity of heat and mass transfer processes. Today, licorice has a wide range of applications in the production of various food products. To implement spray drying of licorice root extract in production practice, it is necessary to perform complex experimental and analytical studies on statics, kinetics and modeling of the spray drying process. The purpose of the study is to study the influence of the main factors: initial humidity and temperature of the drying agent on the productivity of spray drying of licorice root extract. Experimental studies were carried out according to a multifactorial complete plan, and a statistical method was used to process the results. To improve the spray drying process, the specific productivity of the working volume of the drying chamber for the licorice root extract (initial extract) was adopted as the target function, since it corresponds to the mass of the initial extract, which was dried to the adopted final moisture content, in a unit of the working volume of the drying chamber per unit of time. When organizing a continuous spray drying process on the YC-015 unit, an empirical dependence was determined for calculating the volume of the drying chamber involved at the time of the drying process, with various combinations of factors affecting the process. The results made it possible to determine the experimental drying time to a moisture content of Wк=0.05 kg/kg and the numerical values of the calculated parameters of the spray drying process of the licorice root extract. Analysis of the obtained calculation results and their graphical interpretation shows that an increase in the temperature of the drying agent causes an increase in the values of the target function due to the intensification of the processes of moisture removal from the dispersed droplets of the licorice root extract solution.