Littleford Day Testing Program

In keeping with its pioneering work in advancing drying and thermal processing technology, Littleford Day maintains a modern, sophisticated Technical Center wherein customers’ and prospective customers’ products can be dried in both atmospheric and vacuum dryers. These test dryers range in size from 5 liters, 130L, 800L up to 1200L.

The high efficiency labyrinth design jackets on the test dryers are hooked up via plumbing manifolds to sources of chilled, warm and hot water, steam (up to 75 p.s.i.g.) and hot recirculating heat transfer oil. The piping in and out of the jacket is equipped with thermocouples to monitor both the incoming and outgoing jacket temperatures. Instrumentation and support equipment for the test dryers is typically set up to monitor at least the following parameters: profiles on product temperature ingoing and outgoing jacket temperature, recovery of jacket condensate, power consumption of the plows and chopper, vapor temperature in the vacuum lines, condensate recovery of the volatiles, % volatiles in representative samples, vacuum levels during drying, air/gas purge rates during drying, and the final material balance on all the components of the starting materials. If the drying test also involves filtration then the additional parameters of filter design, filter placement, choice of filter media, utilization of decanting, plow design, etc. will also be investigated in order to optimize the filtration/drying process.

The scope of drying tests may range from the very simple all the way to filtering, washing and drying a slurry down through a granules to a lump-free powder-followed by higher temperature drying cycle to remove the final chemically bound water (moisture of hydration) from the product. Littleford Day is confident that you will find the data compiled during the test program to be valuable and useful in assessing Littleford Day drying equipment for your application.

Littleford Day Trial Demonstration Program

Your Littleford Day Sales Engineer can arrange for the rental of a trial demonstration mixer or dryer (FKM, VT, or DVT Series in the 130L, 800L and 1200L size) for testing in your own plant. Our Trial Demonstration Program offers potential customers in the processing industry a unique opportunity to test Littleford Day equipment in their own manufacturing environment.

Through the Trial Demonstration Program, you are able to determine the processing advantages and efficiencies of the Littleford Day equipment without large commitments of research and development funds.