GEA Spray Cooler

The cooling process

The technology behind spray cooling is very similar to spray drying whereby a melt is atomized and cooled down in an airstream. Depending on the particle size in demand, atomization takes place using either a Rotary Atomizer, high pressure nozzles or a fountain nozzle. The cooling media – cold air, either directly from the outside or indirectly via a closed-cycle air cooler – is distributed through a specially designed air distributor located at the ceiling of the spray cooling chamber. For products requiring extra cooling or products generating heat due to crystallization, a VIBRO-FLUIDIZER™ Fluid Bed is placed below the spray cooling chamber to provide additional after-cooling. The fines created during the atomization and cooling will be carried through the air exhaust duct of the spray cooler together with the cooling air and discharged from a Bag Filter or into the VIBRO-FLUIDIZER™. 

For extra coarse particles - 500 to 2000 microns - also referred to as prills, the Fluidized Spray Cooler is the optimal solution. Here atomization takes place by a low-speed Rotary Atomizer with a specially designed prilling wheel in a spray cooling chamber of a large diameter and equipped with an integrated Fluid Bed at the bottom. The cooling media (cold air) is introduced through the perforated plate in the Fluid Bed, where simultaneous fluidization and solidification of the prills takes place.