Industry-scale spray-drying microencapsulation of orange aroma

The article describes an attempt to solve a real industrial problem, connected with the not very efficient enclosure of orange aroma during industrial microencapsulation, by the replacement of conventional mixing by single-stage homogenization during feed emulsion preparation. The powders obtained from solutions after 17 MPa homogenization were characterized by a lower water content and better flowability. The powders from solutions after 25 MPa homogenization showed better myrcene retention. An additional aim of this work was to investigate the physicochemical properties of powders obtained from the cyclone container and the drying chamber. This approach is connected with the fact that older generation spray dryers do not have systems protecting against local powder deposits in the chamber. In such situations, in order to reduce losses, the powder from the cyclone container and the one from chamber are mixed together, even if they have different properties. The results obtained show the significant differences between the powders collected from the cyclone container and the chamber of the spray dryer in terms of water content, bulk density, particle-size distribution and aroma retention. The powders obtained from the chamber were characterized by a lower water content, better flowability and a lower porosity value. Hierarchical cluster analysis confirmed the differences between the investigated microcapsule variants.