Granules from fine powder: Agglomaration

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rollingstein
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I'm trying to convert a fine powder into hard granules (1mm - 3mm dia) & was trying to use a Fluidized Bed Dryer to do it. It seems to somewhat work but the granules stay crumbly & soft rather than the hard product I need.

My protocol is to mix ~20% starch as a binder & then add water & fluidize the bed with 50 C air for about 30 minutes in the hope that the particles agglomerate.

Any tips? What other parameters are relevant?
 

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I'm sorry you are not generating any responses at the moment. Is there any additional information you can share with us? Any new findings?
 
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Greg Bernhardt said:
I'm sorry you are not generating any responses at the moment. Is there any additional information you can share with us? Any new findings?

No, I gave up on the problem. I couldn't find a way to get it to work.
 
The problem may be with the binder. Thinking about it from first principles, you need a binder that will wet the metal, but has a high enough surface tension (and high viscosity would help) to hold the granule together.

If I had to solve this problem, I would be looking at a fatty acid salt of the metal you are trying to agglomerate.