Spray Drying Kit for X-ray Powder Diffraction
The James Hutton Institute offer a commercially available spray drying kit. PDF flyer
The Method
Spray drying is a method capable of producing truly random powder samples for x-ray powder diffraction (XRPD). However, the application of spray drying as a method of sample preparation for XRPD has not been widely adopted. This may be largely due to problems with insufficient recovery when trying to spray dry small samples (approximately 1g). Equipment has been developed at The James Hutton Institute which overcomes this difficulty and allows spray drying to be used as a routine method of sample preparation for minerals, rocks, soil, sediments or similar materials. Essentially, samples are prepared as an aqueous slurry and sprayed into a heated chamber. In the chamber the spherical spray droplets dry, forming spherical granules, which are collected on a sheet of sample paper.