Test center for drying

Test center for drying – bring your ideas to life

Whatever your drying challenges, stage of product and process development, or refinement, we’ll work with you to evaluate processes and configure equipment before you consider committing to high-value capital investment. We can assess process viability and efficiency, explore scale up, and investigate upgrading or improving existing processes for drying food ingredients, starches and proteins, dairy, pharmaceutical chemical and coffee powders. By working with GEA and our state-of-the-art equipment and digital tools you can have more confidence in making informed decisions, look to optimize recipes and processes for great product quality, and potentially shorten development timelines and costs. 

Physical and virtual testing for seamless processing

The GEA drying test center in Copenhagen is the largest of its kind, and houses more than 35 GEA plants for freeze drying, fluid bed drying and spray drying, and for powder handling. Our experts can also combine physical spray drying tests with virtual testing that harnesses the latest computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools. In close collaboration with other GEA technology centers, we have access to upstream processes including mixing, filtration, freeze concentration and heat treatment, allowing us to evaluate and configure a more complete, seamless drying line. For customers based in North America we offer dedicated spray drying testing at facilities at our site in Colombia, US.

Virtual Spray Dryer Testing 

The GEA Virtual Spray Dryer Testing platform, based on the latest computation fluid dynamics tools and advanced modelling, lets us simulate and gain deep insight into the performance of a spray drying process in all its complexity. We can use the virtual system to test, evaluate and fine tune spray drying configurations and operating parameters that it would be tricky, or prohibitively costly, to test using physical systems. 

Virtual Spray Dryer Testing, at a glance:

• Can be applied to existing equipment and is associated with much lower risk than physical testing, saving on potential production losses, time and costs
• Let’s you quickly assess the likely consequences of any change to the spray dryer settings or design, giving you more confidence in decision making 
• Gives you key insights that will inform on the best set up and fine-tuned configuration when designing new spray drying plants 
• Has no impact on the day-to-day operation of a physical plant, so you don’t sacrifice production time and profits

Drynetics flow modelling platform assesses drying kinetics

Advanced analytical capabilities at the GEA test center include our proprietary dynamic flow modelling platform, DRYNETICS®, which applies data generated using the single droplet drying system, DRYING KINETICS ANALYZER, to assess drying kinetics in detail. DRYNETICS® makes it possible to conduct early-stage tests using only a few milliliters of material, helping to minimize costs and ultimately reduce development timeframes. We can in addition transfer relevant data to our computational fluid dynamics simulations to further aid optimizing your process design. 

Powder testing data supports optimal powder handling system configuration

Powder handling and transport can impact on and be affected by powder properties and performance. At our test center we can analyze powder compressibility, moisture content, flowability, fluidization behavior and more, to help us configure the best powder handling and, if required, transport systems for dairy, food ingredients and coffee powders. 

A drying test center tailored to your application

Our test center is equipped with state-of-the-art drying technology and broad expertise, spanning a wide range of powder applications, including dairy and food ingredients, coffee products, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Explore some of the applications summarized below, and don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Send us a sample of your raw material or a prototype product, and we can configure and test a drying process that is tailored to your needs, and which can be scaled up for commercial manufacturing. Our extensive experience covers a variety of sample types, including solutions, slurries, pastes, filter cakes, and powders.