Fluidized bed spray granulation has been applied for more than 60 years in various industries, as chemical, pharmaceutical and food industry and allows the production of tailor-made particles with defined product properties. Nevertheless, the connection between the process parameters and the later granule morphology and product properties is still challenging and not yet fully understood. In this study, spray granulation experiments were performed in a lab-scale fluidized bed (GF 3, Glatt GmbH, Germany) with various process parameters to determine the influence on the granule morphology and the surface roughness. Non-porous Cellets® 500 particles were sprayed with a sodium benzoate solution in bottom-spray configuration with a two-fluid nozzle. By applying a design of experiment approach, meaningful experiments with varying gas volume flow rate, fluidization gas temperature, spray rate and pressure of the nozzle air were performed. The influence of the temperature of the atomization air in the two-fluid nozzle is shown to have a major impact on the resulting surface structure.
