US Patent 7322124 Spray-drying device

The invention relates to a spray-drying device (1) having a vertical drying chamber (2), material-atomization means (4) and drying-gas feed (6) means. Filter elements (11) are present in order to filter the fine particles out of the flow of drying gas (7). The fine particles are periodically removed from the filter elements (11) and collected in fine-particle collection means (10) in such a manner that they remain separate from the main flow of spray-dried material. In this way, it is possible to successfully control the properties of the spray-dried (main) material without it being undesirably influenced by the fine particles.