Abstract

Spray drying is a relatively recent, highly versatile drying technology enabling the transformation of a liquid feed into a dry powder. The corresponding transformations take place as the feed is sprayed in a hot-air stream acting as a drying agent. Over the years, spray drying has evolved as an industry-friendly drying technology with a wide range of applications in several sectors, including the food and pharmaceutical industries. In the food industries, spray drying is commonly used for producing various foods and ingredients, such as milk powder, whey/casein powder, cheese powder, ice cream mix powder, egg powder, cereal powder, dried infant foods, instant coffee/tea powder, juice powder, instant soup powder, fish powder, as well as flavor and color ingredients (Karel et al., 1995; Schuck et al., 2016; Shishir and Chen, 2017). An emerging application is the encapsulation of food ingredients by spray drying (Anandharamkrishnan and Padma, 2015). Depending on the nature (e.g., solution, suspension, or emulsion) and properties of the feed, and on spray-drying conditions, an ever-expanding range of spray-dried products can be obtained.