Spray Dryer: A Globally Appreciated Technique to Bring Exotic Herbs into Supplements
In Summary
Spray drying is a method of producing a dry powder from a liquid or slurry by rapidly drying the mixture with a hot gas. This method of drying is preferred for many thermallysensitive materials such as herbsand pharmaceuticals. Herbs needextraattention to preserve their phenols, flavonoids and other active constituents even after they are processed. Using spray dryer, extracts obtained from herbs can be converted into powders with all their active constituents preserved in them.
A significantapplication of the spray drying technique is to prepare "dehydrated" powders of substances which do not have any water to dehydrate. For example, various ratios of tea extracts are spray-dried to create instant tea drink mixes.
To process herbal extracts, typical excipients arealso used that gives stability to theobtained powder.Duringspray drying of herbal products, following high molecular weight carbohydrates, such as starch, modified starch, dextran, maltodextrins (MD), solid corn syrups, gum arabicum, cyclodextrins, etc. are generally used as excipients.