The Britannia Soap Drying Plant is a self-contained set of equipment which is used for drying neat soap into either laundry soap bars or toilet soap noodles. Liquid soap is pumped from the saponification section through a fine mesh filter and into a feed tank. This ensures the spray drying atomiser receives a steady supply of neat soap at a constant pressure. A feed pump draws neat soap from the feed tank, and passes it though a heat exchanger to raise the temperature ready for spraying. Hot neat soap is sprayed into the vacuum atomiser, from a central rotating shaft.
Excess water flashes off as steam and dried soap sticks to the chamber walls. A rotating scraper lifts dry soap off, which falls into the plodder screw below, for continuous extrusion. The steam is continuously extracted by a vacuum system. Any entrained soap dust powder is removed from the steam by cyclone separators and the steam is recondensed for recycling or discharge. The process is continuous.
Neat soap is heated, sprayed, dried, extruded and steam extracted then condensed, all at the same time. The whole plant is controlled by a central electrical panel. The Britannia Spray Drying equipment is made to a high standard, with close tolerance fits and clearances in accordance with British Standards. Outputs range from 250 kilos per hour to 6 tonnes per hour and use simplex, twin simplex, duplex or triplex plodders as appropriate. Finished soap moisture contents can be for laundry soap or toilet soap. Transparent soap spray drying, with the addition of extra glycerine, can also be provided
The vacuum atomiser chamber is placed on top of a single or twin screw plodder, which continuously extrudes soap in either bar or pelletised noodle form. Hot liquid neat soap is sprayed in, dried soap is extruded and steam extracted then condensed in a continuous cycle, whilst the vacuum is maintained.