Patent ID: 9527104
Filing Date: 2016-12-27
CPC Classification: B01J,B05C

Claim Text:
1. A granulator for forming granules from a liquid product, the granulator comprising: a reactor with a fluidizing bed comprising i) one or more injection zone(s) where a feed stream of seed particles is contacted/coated by the liquid product, and ii) one or more granulation zone(s) where the contacted/coated seed particles are dried, shaped and cooled into solid granules; a liquid feed inlet for introducing a feed stream of the liquid product into the one or more injection zone(s) in the form of a spray of dispersed liquid droplets; a seed particle inlet for introducing the feed stream of seed particles into the one or more injection zone(s) such that the seed particles are contacted/coated with the liquid product in the form of the spray of dispersed liquid droplets; an outlet for extracting granules from the one or more granulation zone(s) and sorting equipment for sorting the extracted granules into three size fractions; undersize granules with too small diameters compared to a desired size range, on-size granules with diameters within the desired size range, and oversize granules with too large diameters compared to the desired size range from the one or more granulation zone(s); transportation means for passing the fraction of on-size granules to post-treatment equipment for forming product granules; removal means for removing the fraction of oversize granules from the granulation process; and transportation means for passing the fraction of undersize granules into the feed stream of seed particles, wherein the fluidized bed comprises a classifier in the one or more granulation zone(s), and wherein the classifier segregates the granules according to size, the classifier passes at least a fraction of the segregated undersize granules in the classifier back to the one or more injection zone(s), and the classifier comprises two or more heat exchanger tubes, at a distance from each other, extending across a horizontally oriented cross-sectional area of the classifier.