Automation of industrial spray dryer

In this article, we would like to illustrate some basic principles of spray drying which is, by definition, the transformation of feed from a fluid state into a dried particulate form by spraying the feed into a hot drying medium. It is a one-step, continuous particle-processing operation involving drying. The aim of a spray-dryer control system is the maintenance of desired dried product quality, irrespective of what disturbances occur within the drying operation and variations in feed supply. With our counter-current spray dryer (diameter 5.5 m, height 20 m), we produce zeolite (granulate form). It is manually controlled with fully automated equipment for continuous measurement of process parameters. With the implementation of Fuzzy control (Zadeh, L.A. IEEE Trans. on Syst. Man and Cyber., SMC-3, 1973, 28-44; Mamdani, H. H. Proc. IEEE, 12, 1974, 1585-88; Evans, G.W. et aI., Application of Fuzzy Set Methodologies in Industrial Engineering, Publisher: Amsterdam, 1989) we would like to increase process stability and, above all, to reach constant product quality.