Dynamic Atomization: Narrowing Powder Particle Variance

Dynamic Atomization: Narrowing Powder Particle Variance

By Stephen Enloe, Ulli Lindauer and Will West | Advanced Powder Dynamics

Dynamic atomization technology offers a narrow control band for particle size, ensuring consistent powder properties crucial for production line performance and product quality. This advanced approach minimizes variance, enabling predictable powder behavior for applications like beverage machines, tablet compression, and capsule filling, while also optimizing shipping weight by controlling moisture content. (57 words)

Achieving consistent powder properties is paramount for product efficacy and manufacturing efficiency in industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to food. Partnering with experienced contract spray dryers leverages decades of expertise and cutting-edge technology, mitigating the substantial capital expenditure and years of knowledge acquisition required to build in-house capabilities. (57 words)

This discussion will detail how dynamic atomization minimizes particle variance, the financial benefits of outsourcing spray drying, and the critical role of sophisticated software management and real-time monitoring in ensuring consistent output. We will also highlight how leading-edge equipment and ongoing innovation from contract partners provide a sustained competitive advantage. (53 words)

You will gain insights into selecting strategic spray drying partners, understanding the financial advantages of outsourcing, and leveraging advanced technology to enhance product quality and accelerate market entry. (29 words)

TL;DR – Quick Summary

Unlock the power of advanced powder technology to revolutionize your product development and manufacturing.

Precise Particle Control: Dynamic atomization technology offers a narrow control band for particle size, ensuring consistent powder properties crucial for production line performance and product quality.

Outsource Capital Savings: Partnering with an experienced contract spray dryer eliminates significant capital expenditure and the complexities of building in-house capabilities, saving years of expertise acquisition.

Reduced Operational Costs: Outsourcing spray drying can lead to substantial savings by reducing capital investment, factory overhead, preventative maintenance costs, and operating expenses associated with staffing and downtime.

Real-Time Production Management: Sophisticated software management and real-time monitoring of production lines allow for immediate adjustments, ensuring consistent output and meeting client specifications.

Competitive Technology Access: Leveraging a contract spray dryer’s leading-edge equipment and ongoing innovation provides a competitive advantage, preventing in-house technology from becoming outdated within 1-2 years.

Pro tip: When evaluating partners, look beyond just cost; consider their ability to drive revenue growth and create new product opportunities through strategic collaboration, not just price per pound.

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Optimizing Powder Properties with Dynamic Atomization Technology

Will: I think technology also plays a very important role here, Hendrik. So when I joined the company, I learned very quickly that in spray drying, and Will actually alluded to this in one of his earlier answers, there can be an enormous variance in the output material, meaning you have from like. The smallest to the largest particle in your finished powder can be a spread this wide or this wide or this wide. Or one of the things that dynamic atomization technology allows us to do is to have a very, very narrow band of control. What these particles look like, how they behave. So there is a very tight band. In which the powder properties can be controlled, which is very important because ultimately all these properties of a powder then control how does it work in the production line for the finished product. Is it flowing properly through the, let’s say, powder beverage machines? Or is it compressible for tablets? Does it fill capsules properly? Can it be shipped easily? How is the moisture content? Moisture content is really interesting because moisture content has enormous ramifications in terms of the weight of the product. So if you want to ship something from the US to the Far East, to Australia, to Latin America, you are always trying to minimize the size and the density and of course… Minimize the weight because that’s very expensive to ship. And so I think that’s really one of the important things is that this technology is on top of all the quality protocols, all the batch to batch. Measurements and the testing that goes on, but the technology in and of itself is a wonderful and incredible tool to minimize variance in the final product. That’s exactly right.

think what we’re describing here is the layers and layers of capability that can go into the creation of sophisticated and successful products for a client. Whether it’s an APD project or it’s another company that’s producing outcomes for a client, what the client should look for is they should look for a partner. Who has tremendous experience building products that are sophisticated and refined powders. It starts with a history of successful production where the team that’s doing it understands how to create a repeatable process because the experience of the team is going to be the first line of defense in setting up and running successful projects. With the equipment. They have. The second line of technology is the technology and the intellectual property embedded in the production line. We have a very diverse and broad set of capabilities that extend beyond traditional spray drying. But regardless of the equipment, that equipment needs to be able to repeat the process. To make identical particles time after time, every time that client shows up to the factory to create their product again. Because if they’re successful, they’re going to want to refresh that inventory every month or every two months or every three months. And they need that particle, that powder to be identical so that the market and their customers appreciate that they’re getting the same product every time they open a bottle or a canister or have a solution come to them from the market. To the customer at the end of the day.

And so they need to be able to set that machinery so that they’re repeating the process with exactly the same configuration, the exact same nozzle settings, venturi pressure, port pressures, and everything is the same every time they run the production line, the control temperatures, the inlet settings, the outlet settings. Otherwise, the particles are going to differ. And that bell curve that Ulli spoke about. Is never going to be repeated. The particles will never be the same. The product can never be the same for the client and for the customers, and they will not succeed in the market. So the technology and the production line is the second layer. But beyond that, our production lines, like many, are software driven. When I show up to the factory,. They might be running a third party client product. They might be running one of my products. Maybe they’re producing siloed butyrate, which is the most advanced butyrate input powder on the market. And we use it to make one of our finished products. They can look at the software, and it’s a real time output of all of the elements that we’ve spoken about. So they know in real time what the commercial line or the pilot line is producing. For all of the powder flowing through that machinery and coming out and being packaged. So they know as they’re producing exactly what they’re getting. And we know that we’re gonna be happy with the powder coming out that line. And so the sophistication and the software management of the production line is very critical because they can make real time adjustments to the line and make sure that we’re getting the results that we need. Ultimately, the fourth layer is the testing.

We test the inputs rigorously along the way. We take samples during the testing. We’re pulling them out of the production line as we produce. And they’re also testing, of course, the finished product after the fact. Just like as a client, we test our finished products before they go to market to assure safety, quality, all those things that we need for ourselves, for an audit trail, for the FDA, et cetera. But we don’t wait until then. We’re testing it as the manufacturer during the process. But we know from. The results of the software, that everything is being produced according to our specifications, the client specifications, and that tells us that the machinery is performing. And so as a client looking for the right partner, you need to know that it’s not just the people, it’s not just the intellectual property in the technology of the production line, that there’s great software management tools on top of that production line. That there are quality checks on top of those software tools. There’s testing going along with it so that by the time you’re testing your product at the end of the day, all of those layers have been in place before then to create what you want to create for that finished product that you specified in that very first discussion when you came to your prospective partner to describe what you were trying to achieve.

Ulli: Let me take that and build on that in a little bit of a different way because a lot of one of the questions that we get a lot Stephen is. Should I make it or should I buy it, right? If I’m a customer and I am looking for spray drying capabilities, I can either contract that out with a partner like Advanced Powder Dynamics, or I can actually consider doing it myself. And as I think we all kind of come to appreciate over the last hour in this conversation, it’s an enormous. Amount of capital expenditure that stands behind this. So to build capabilities for customized or even, you know, general mainstream spray, tall drying is pretty substantial. You don’t, you not only need the machines, the machines are a very large CapEx. You need the machines, you need the buildings to house them, you need the team to operate them, you need the expertise, you need the technology, you need the software, you need all the downstream elements, you need all the upstream elements. Relationships with laboratories for the testing, relationships with ingredient manufacturers, you need an R&D lab, you need machinery for that. So, you know, when people ask, it smarter to make it or buy it, it’s pretty obvious it is. Much, much more financially effective to buy it from a third-party expert than to build it yourself and spend years and years and years acquiring the expertise and the knowledge and going through all of this. So in my opinion, how does that reduce my capital expenditure if I go to a spray dryer? Well, that’s not even the… The first question is, do I want to make the product, yes or no?

If I do want to make the product, then I clearly want to buy the expertise to make it. Now, the other thing is, depending on who you end up drying your product with, the end product, to a large extent, will be controlling your working capital expenditure, meaning…

Will: We want to communicate our thoughts and experiences. Because the point of the review about the challenges of the world, is that any sort of state of mind or a rock-eating country will be controlling to our working capital, the. Community, and the people who are to be affected by the.

Ulli: You spend a lot of money bringing ingredients to the spray drying company. Then it’s even more valuable once it’s finished. So then you have to put it in your warehouse or ship it to your manufacturing facility where it gets turned into a tablet, a capsule, a drink, a protein bar, a ceramic powder, anything. But this finished product that leaves advanced powder dynamics.

Will: You know, slow down, you won’t watch this. You know, play the new one. Give it to your mom. That’s it.

Ulli: Represents a very large financial investment. the longer your shelf life is, the easier it is to transport, the better it is performing in manufacturing. Those are all capital expenditure savings for the client down the road. They don’t have to damage inventory out after a year because shelf life is probably three years or even longer. It’s not. As expensive to transport because the water is almost entirely gone, depending on the requirements. It flows easier. You have a lot less machine downtime. So that to me is one of my favorite questions because it really brings to the forefront the value of what these third-party custom troll drying companies can provide.

Stephen: Yeah, and I would, I love that. Would love to hear from Will and Hendrik as well a little bit if you have an answer for that. But that question of how can contract spray drying help me reduce my capital equipment investment while maintaining product quality?

Will: Well, first of all, assuming that you have the right partner to provide the drawing resources on an outsourced and partnership basis, that has to be the baseline assumption because you need that quality from the partner. If you have the wrong partner, you won’t get the quality. So let’s control for that and set it to the side. On the question of the financial logic, think Ulli nailed it. It makes a lot of sense because you can eliminate the capex. That though is only one third of the value from a financial point of view. There are a lot of other fixed and semi-fixed costs that you can eliminate. Let’s consider, for example, that you eliminate all the preventative maintenance costs. You eliminate the need to ensure all that additional costs. You eliminate a lot of the factory overhead that would come from the space required to have it and so many other things that go around with maintaining that equipment. You eliminate a lot of operating costs as well because you would have to maintain the staff to run that equipment. You would frankly, most likely have a lot of downtime. So you would have unused capacity for that most likely. You would probably want to launch other products over time to make use of that equipment. So then you have a situation where you would start by needing to invest in equipment if you wanted to make the capital expenditure, but you would be fine tuning equipment for one product or one product line, but eventually launching other products or product lines. And there’s a question of two major issues. One is. Can you maintain and even optimize your equipment to run separate products or separate product lines?

And do you have the expertise to do that? Most people or most organizations then have additional operating costs if they’re going to bring in that type of expertise in addition to the line or production staff to just do the operation of that equipment. Because that’s a different and more sophisticated group of people because you’re really bringing in. R&D people in addition to the production staff and you need additional capabilities on that line if you’re going to run diversified set of products on that line. The second consideration is that equipment will need to advance over time if it’s going to maintain its edge in the market. If you have a sophisticated external partner,. They’re going to keep their equipment leading edge if they’re investing in the equipment, if they’re sophisticated, running and developing new products, if they’re innovative, if they’re worried about differentiation, if they’re learning from all their other clients and developing their own IP. You don’t have any of those advantages if you bring your equipment in-house. You’re basically insular. And you lose track of market innovation if you’re trying to do everything yourself. You simply cannot learn from the external environment unless you’re constantly hiring people and bringing them in because you’re poaching them from the outside environment. That can be extremely expensive. So there’s the capex cost. There’s the some fixed overhead costs which go into your cogs. And that gets extremely expensive, drives up your cost, reduces your margin, which is already under pressure if you’re trying to do it yourself and you have to reach scale. And there’s the burden on your standard operating cost and your expenses.

So you really get penalized on all three, even though people just look at it as a capex cost, which gets amortized and expensed over time. It’s much more painful than that.

Stephen: That makes a lot of sense. And it’s almost a similar vein of answer to kind of the first question even of when you really, really look at it, do you need something that custom? Do you need something that in-house? Do you need something that is even going to be that solution? And if you do, it doesn’t seem like the value is really there. Almost any of the time for a lot of these people.

Will: Yeah, I mean, it’s one thing to look at this from a financial perspective. And that lens is a very telling lens. Any CFO who, I mean, and I was CFO of a major company before, and I can tell you that lens alone is enough to probably make the decision. But when a CEO looks at this, the thing I would encourage CEOs to evaluate, putting the financial question aside, is the loss of opportunity. That comes from the strategic discussions that can be had with the right partner. Because if you have the right discussions with a strategic partner, the opportunities to learn and create entirely new products and entirely new revenue streams, that adds tremendous value. And if I’m a CEO coming to a partner with ideas to attack a marketplace,. I don’t want to just sit down with them and say, how can you drive my product and give me a price? The discussion I want to have is, how can we turn this idea into five products in a global market or an international market or in three or four different segments? And I’m depending upon them to be a partner to grow new revenue streams. I can’t have that discussion with a handful of production operators in an internal department who are just running a machine. So the value that comes from the right partner is one that grows revenue and profits with good margin. It’s not just how much does it cost to dry a product.

Stephen: So I want to actually come back to that kind of same perspective, that CEO conversation, finding the right partner. We’re going to come back to that on a future question. In the meantime, I do want to ask the question while we’re still kind of on the. Kind of technical product focused section of the questions, which is what documentation and certifications should I require from a contract spray drying partner to meet my industry’s regulatory standards? I know it’s a really broad question.

Hendrik: I do want to get back to what Will and Ulli just mentioned on the previous question. And what I would like to add to that is we very often have to remind customers that product characteristics and requirements change. And it changed because delivery systems change. The requirements for different products and the delivery systems change continuously. There’s new technologies based on the product requirements. And if your technology doesn’t maintain that change or accommodate those product characteristic change requirements, and you don’t have access to the engineering and the innovation, then you won’t be able to keep up with the new product requirements and new formulation requirements. It’s a very important factor that we always have to explain to our customers.

Will: That came from a combination of a lot of different kinds of expression. I don’t have access to any of the that the breaks down, but I was able to push out the image rather than the plan to the content. The very important factors that I’ve had to focus on.

The ‘Make or Buy’ Decision for Spray Drying Capabilities

Hendrik: If you don’t have access to the latest technology, you don’t have the ability to update your.

Will: If I don’t have access to the issues of compilation, I don’t have the ability to the publication.

Hendrik: Technology and you don’t have the engineering expertise to update that, you’re going to sit with outdated technology that do not comply with your latest product requirements within a year or two years.

Stephen: Yeah, no, makes a lot of sense. So.

Ulli: Me let me answer your other question and then I’ll hand it over to Hendrik So the question was what kind of certifications should I be looking for in a spray-drying partner? And Stephen you you already basically said it it depends right are you operating in a regulated industry? Meaning are you in the food and beverage market in the dietary supplement market consumables gummies bars, whatever. Are you in the unregulated? Are you looking for ceramic powder to make tiles or some building material? So it really depends on each industry, each market segment that uses powders drying in general is beholden to a different set of requirements legally. Like the FDA, for example, or other regulatory bodies. Now, on top of that, you can layer consumer preferences that will basically derive who you are going to market to and who you are going to appeal to, which then brings in good manufacturing processes, GNP, and things like kosher, halal, organic,.