Metal spray freeze-drying

The metal solutions are sprayed into cold liquids for rapid freezing, after which the droplets are freeze dried and decomposed to metal oxides. Due to the homogeneous distribution of the components, the reactions in the solid state occur at lower temperatures compared with conventionally produced powders. 

For the preparation of co-precipitated, e.g. mixed metal oxide, catalysts, the drying step cannot be carried out satisfactorily in the preparation robot. Usually a spray drying step is applied in the production of this kind of catalyst, because the liquid phase of the precipitate suspension still contains dissolved salts that are essential for the catalytic performance. Hence, the suspension must not be filtered off nor can be dried by evaporation due to crystallization reasons. Since there are no laboratory spray-dryers available for that sample size, another method had to be implemented and was found in the freeze drying of these materials [4]. With this method almost the same is done like in spray diying but on another time-scale. Where a spray drier evaporates the water very quickly and thereby prevents the crystallization of the still dissolved salts, Ihe freeze drier literally at first freezes the solution and no crystallization can occur while the water is sublimated. Hence, an identical product is obtained. 

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