How to Dry Fertilizer Granules?

What is the purpose of drying after granular fertilizer production line? Granular fertilizer drying, as a critical process, may efficiently remove moisture while also improving its quality and consistency.

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Granular fertilizer is frequently utilized in modern agriculture production, which is normally dry and appears as the forms of pellets or solid granules. And after granulation, how to dry fertilizer granules becomes a hot topic. This page will briefly introduce the relevant content of particle fertilizer drying.

Why Should You Dry Fertilizer Pellets?

As you can see, fertilizer granulation production line includes fermentation, crushing, mixing, wet granulation, and drying processes. At this time, there are some fertilizer plants holding a question:

“Seemingly, now that the granulation work is successful to make fertilizer particles, I wonder if I could skip the drying process.”

The answer is NO. Because granular fertilizer often includes high humidity throughout the manufacturing process and brings challenges to its quality and storage stability. Hence, this makes the drying process particularly important.

Above all, adding water is necessary while processing organic or inorganic materials to make powder into granular fertilizer. After the wet granulation, the moisture content of the granules is normally 50-55%. As a result, if you don’t use the drum dryer, the granules would create agglomeration owing to the high moisture, damaging product quality, transportation, and sales.

For Organic Fertilizer Granular Production
For Compound Fertilizer Granular Production

For Organic Fertilizer Granular Production

Although the material moisture content has decreased after the early fermentation, crushing, and mixing, it has only been met the needs of suitable processing particles. According to production and sales standard of organic fertilizer, short-term sales of products only need no more than 30% moisture content. Generally speaking, material processing can keep the moisture content within the range of 20% to 40%. Thus, if organic fertilizer production plants want to fulfill the requirement, the dryer is essential.

For Compound Fertilizer Granular Production

If you would like producing finished fertilizer for longer storage time or processing compound fertilizer pellets, you must keep the moisture less than 13%. Otherwise, the pellets may form caking in the bags in the storage period. Furthermore, excessive moisture in manufacturing compound fertilizer will cause the inorganic raw materials to dissolve, resulting in powder or granular softening. As a result, the granular compound fertilizer production line can not separate with the dryer and cooler.

What Is The Procedure of Drying Fertilizer Particles?

The First Point

First of all, the principle of granular drum dryer is the process of heating and drying granular fertilizer by the hot air or airflow.

The Second Point

In general, granular fertilizer drying equipment consists of the feeding system, hot air supply system, the combustion chamber, and the exhaust system.

The Third Point

In the drying process, the hot air enters the internal cylinder via the hot air supply system and evaporates the moisture in the wet granular fertilizer, which is subsequently released by the air exhaust system.
In this way, the moisture in the granular fertilizer is gradually removed, thereby realizing the drying effect.

Note: Drying the organic fertilizer should be in the condition of moderate temperature and with a high air flow.

Firstly, if the temperature is too high, the organic matter will carbonize and the nitrogen will evaporate.
Besides, when the air volume is too little, water vapor in the dryer cannot be promptly emptied.
Also, this makes condensate form easily in the dryer’s back section, causing drying particles in the first section to get secondary wet.

What Are The Main Components of The Drum Drying Machine?

Increasing The Strength of Fertilizer Pellets

In the process of granular fertilizer commercialization, low intensity pellets is unfavorable for bagging and transportation. During these processes, the low strength cause the damage rate to raise. Therefore, in order to fulfill the commercialized demands, the fertilizer production line requires the drying machine after granulation.

Improving The Quality of Granular Fertilizer

Wet granular fertilizer is prone to agglomeration and degradation with the moisture content of 50-55%. However, removing moisture from granular fertilizer during the drying process can significantly increase its quality. Furthermore, this step makes pellets more homogeneous and stable, promoting nutrient release when applying fertilizer.

Strengthening The Stability of Storing Fertilizer Granules

In high humidity situations, granular fertilizers absorb moisture, resulting in caking and quality loss. Drying effectively removes moisture from particles, making it more suitable for long-term storage, decrease quality loss and cut storage costs. Also, it can effectively extend the storage and transportation period of granules.

Enhancing The Production Efficiency

The drying equipment can remove water from granular fertilizer efficiently, decreasing the manufacturing cycle. When compared to natural drying, the drum drying machine may significantly reduce drying time, increase production efficiency, and save time as well as labor expenses.