Spray-drying of alumina powder for APS: effect of slurry properties and drying conditions upon particle size and morphology of feedstock

In this paper, effects of variables concerning slurry properties and drying conditions on the particle size and morphology of feedstock were discussed. The results indicated that, the increase of powder loading increased D50 and volume content but reduced recovery rate slightly. Other variables, such as inlet temperature, showed a maximum on the desired property. The particle size of resulting feedstock increased with the rise of feeding rate of slurry, however, decreased with the increase of atomization pressure based on the premise that atomization pressure was enough to force slurry to form the liquid membrane. For preparation of spherical feedstock, optimized variables were as follows: 60 wt.% powder in slurry, 2 wt.% PVA in slurry, inlet temperature of 60°C, atomization pressure of 13 × 103 KPa and feeding rate of 12 ml min−1. The volume content of feedstocks with 10–45 μm was above 65% and for D50 it was 15·42 μm. In addition, according to the heat and mass transfer equation, the drying mechanism was established, which was well in agreement with the experimental results.