Fluidized bed granulation process : study on airflow effect on urea granule physical properties

Loh, Mun Kong (2017) Fluidized bed granulation process : study on airflow effect on urea granule physical properties. Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Fluidized bed granulation is a granulation technique that widely applied in fertilizer, food and pharmaceutical industry. The complexity and multiphase of this process caused failure such as lump formation was easy to occur. Hence, this study which dealt with fluidized bed granulation of urea seed particles by pure binder solution of urea was conducted which aimed to determine the effect of different airflow patterns and process conditions like wind velocity, binder spray pressure and bag shake duration on the physical properties of granules produced. Thirty run of experiments with different setting of process condition that designed using Response Surface Methodology of Central Composite Design in Design Expert software were carried out to find the distribution of granule size, density and hardness. Properties of granules were tested by using sieving, densimeter and portable hardness tester respectively. The data collected was transferred to the software to analyze results using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and determined the optimum parameters to obtain granules with desire properties. It was observed that spiral airflow was the most important factor to produce granules with required size and density under similar process conditions if compared with normal airflow. From ANOVA, binder spray pressure and bag shake duration showed the strongest influence on hardness of granules on both types of airflow patterns. Optimization studies for spiral and normal airflow proved that granules with desire density and hardness can be produced at middle level of wind velocity and binder spray pressure together with high level bag shake duration. For spiral airflow, the optimum value for wind velocity, binder spray pressure and bag shake duration was 28 m/s, 0.31 MPa and 60 s respectively; for normal airflow, it was 25 m/s, 0.20 MPa and 15 s respectively.

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