41119_Niro jubilaeumsbog_blok_uk - GEA Niro

The challenges of drying milk
Born on a Friday the 13th and fled from the communist regime
with his family on October 13, 1968 at 1300 hours was perhaps
not the most optimistic basis for a great career as head of Niro’s
milk development department. But Jan Pisecký from the Czech
Republic had other plans.
With a background as a chemical engineer from the Technical
University of Prague and a Ph.D. degree thereafter, Jan Pisecký
became head of the Czech Dairy Research Institute – a position
which for political reasons was intolerable to him. Until
1968 there had not been many development projects at Niro
for milk powder spray plants, but after Jan Piceský was
hired, things started to happen.
The first challenge for Niro was to make a whole milk powder,
which contains milk fat, soluble in cold water.
Some of the milk fat is forced out onto the surface of the
powder particles, which makes the particles water-repellent
– especially when the water is cold. One of the requirements
was that only “natural ingredients” which the milk already
contained were allowed to be added. This sounded easy, but
it took more than a year for two employees to take the process
from the laboratory to an industrial plant that could produce
a whole milk powder that was cold water-soluble.
The task was solved by spraying a lecithin solution on the
surface of the milk powder particles – a process that customers
lined up to buy.
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Need for product quality among customers
Some of the development projects were inspired by the need
to solve customers’ problems with product quality. The
biggest problem was the density of the milk powder. Almost
all of Niro’s milk plants were based on atomization of the
fluid milk concentrate into small particles with a rotating
ato mizer; that is, a component that converts the liquid into
particles, which are then dried to powder.
This resulted in a lighter powder than the one our competitors
– especially from the U.S. and Japan – could produce. Not
even Niro’s famous, patented “milk wheel” was able to solve
the problem of product quality. During the energy crisis in
the 1970s, when saving energy was a requirement, plants
able to dry the powder in two steps were developed, since it
is cheaper to remove the residual moisture in a vibrating
after-dryer – called a VIBRO-FLUIDIZER ® – compared to a
spray drying plant.
Two-step drying, as it was called, provided better drying
economy but also a heavier powder. With Niro’s high-pressure
nozzles the powder became even heavier, and Niro was ahead
of the competition again. But the development activities
didn’t stop there. Customers required even better drying
economy and higher quality drying, and showed interest