SWIRL FLUIDIZER®

An efficient type of flash dryer for drying pastes, slurries or filter cakes

Designed to effectively dry high solid-content feeds without the need for pre-or post-process treatment, the SWIRL FLUIDIZER® is a great alternative to other forms of solid drying – fluid bed drying, ring drying, and traditional flash drying – for those applications where you would otherwise have to dilute the feed before pumping and atomization. 

And unlike methods such as fluid bed drying, our SWIRL FLUIDIZER® technology can accommodate a wide range of particle shapes and size distribution, to reproducibly create a high quality final powder. 

Features of the SWIRL FLUIDIZER® dryer: 

• Accommodates products that are too viscous to pump and atomize
• Combines drying and product treatment in one stage
• Saves energy relative to other drying methods
• Operates continuously, and is fully automated to minimize the need for human operation
• Built on a compact design that takes up less space than other types of dryers
• Allows for efficient, effective heat and mass transfer
• Designed to help minimize heat loss
• Is comparatively easy to maintain

Many applications, different industries … 

The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® is already used by the global chemical and agrochemical industries for processing a wide range of products, including powdered ceramics and pigments, herbicides and fungicides, organic and inorganic chemicals, and also for drying waste sludge and sediments. 

We’re always ready to look at potential new applications for the SWIRL FLUIDIZER® in both mainstream and more niche applications. So, whether your product is a protein, starch or fiber, we can explore the potential to use the SWIRL FLUIDIZER® technology to process preconcentrated, or partially dried feeds. Just contact your local GEA representative, and let’s start the conversation. 

Drying high-solid and lumpy products into powders

The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® can be an ideal system for products with a solids content that is too high to be pumped and spray dried, and which may be too lumpy to go into a fluid bed directly. The versatile technology can accommodate just about any feed that can be screw fed at a controllable rate. 

As a one-step system the SWIRL FLUIDIZER® is relatively energy efficient and fast. The spin agitator system de-agglomerates, or disintegrates the feed into its primary particle sizes, as it dries. Compared with fluid bed drying, the SWIRL FLUIDIZER® can handle feeds with wider particle size distributions, including non-spherical particles. And in comparison with traditional flash drying or ring drying, our technology can also handle feeds that are more liquid. 

Compact and space saving

The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® can help to maximize use of your available space in three dimensions. Our system is more compact than a flash dryer and fluid bed combination, or a ring dryer with equivalent capacity. This means you may be able to site a SWIRL FLUIDIZER® in areas where other drying platforms would not fit, or would necessitate expensive modifications to building structure and layout. 

 From feed to powder … 

The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® drying chamber is where evaporation, disintegration and powder classification take place. Air is introduced via a tangential air inlet, which creates air rotation that, in combination with action of the disintegrator, enables really fast moisture evaporation, so residence time in the dryer is relatively short. This makes the system energy efficient when compared with some other powder drying methods. The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® can run at really high temperatures, but for heat sensitive products we can configure the system with cooling at the hot air entrance.

Hot drying air is supplied to the air disperser at a controlled rate to ensure optimum thermal efficiency of the drying process. Customers commonly select a bag filter to collect the dried product and clean the spent drying air.
The cylindrical feed tank is equipped with a slowly rotating agitator that ensures a steady feed supply to the bottom-mounted, frequency-controlled dosing screw, transferring feed to the drying chamber at a continuous and controllable rate. The bottom of the chamber has a conical design, and this aids transport of the larger product lumps upwards in the drying chamber. The system design and setup help to ensure that product will not fall back into the gas disperser. The overall design supports separation of the fine dry powder from the remaining larger, and still moist particles, and discharges the dried powder at the top of the unit. 

Energy efficiency in drying and much more

The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® can operate at high temperatures, which makes it really efficient for chemical products that are not heat sensitive. This helps to reduce overall energy consumption, partly because of the lower residence times. The ability to effectively dry preconcentrated feeds that cannot be atomized in a spray dryer means that it’s also possible to use efficient methods to dewater significantly before drying. These factors in combination improve overall dryer efficiency, even for products that require lower drying temperatures. For some SWIRL FLUIDIZER® designs and applications it may also be possible to configure units with GEA AddCool® heat pump technology as well as with conventional heat recovery systems, to further improve energy efficiency and recycling.  

Dryer safety systems

Our focus on safety underpins the design and configuration of all our components, equipment and process lines. We’ll evaluate each SWIRL FLUIDIZER® setup and application and build in appropriate safety systems that may include, where appropriate, standardized fire safety technology, explosion vents, and our COTECTOR® automated carbon dioxide monitor. We can configure reinforced systems to protect against dust explosion, and where necessary, for hazardous feeds or applications that create non-water-based solvent residues we can configure closed cycle SWIRL FLUIDIZER® systems for drying in inert atmospheres. 

Focus on powder process efficiency and product quality

GEA has developed technologies that can improve efficiency and quality, whatever your process or product. The SWIRL FLUIDIZER® can be compatible with our HotSwirl indirect heaters, SANICIP® II (for food applications) or TRH (food and non-food applications) bag filters, and for some applications, our CEE Cyclones. 

GEA test center for drying

Because we are GEA, we don’t just sell technology. We’ll sit down with you so we can get to understand your requirements, and challenges, and then working with you we’ll design the optimum SWIRL FLUIDIZER® for your process, product, and business needs. At our test center in Denmark GEA experts can answer all your questions, and demonstrate our technology at different scales, from pilot to industrial scale. We can help you demonstrate proof of concept, set up closed cycle systems, or evaluate switching from another drying method to our spin agitator system. We also have a rental SWIRL FLUIDIZER® unit that you can test at your own site. 

Whether you are looking to set up a new drying process and need development support at ground level, or you are looking to switch, scale up or optimize an existing drying process, we can offer key technology, process and industry knowhow, backed by decades of experience working with customers in diverse industries. And if you do decide to invest, we will optimize and fine tune your SWIRL FLUIDIZER® system at installation so you can expect great results, right from day one.

Service and support

We stand by the quality of our technologies and by our ongoing support, so we offer tailored packages of service that will help make sure your SWIRL FLUIDIZER® and associated GEA technologies give you top performance and efficiency, from day one, and for the lifespan of your plant. 

And of course, our experts are always on hand to troubleshoot and help you maximize value both from your starting materials and from your investment in our equipment.