Improving the nutritional quality of dairy powders

Lysine, an essential amino acid in dairy products, can be damaged when spray dried under inappropriate processing conditions (dehydration and elevated temperatures). To avoid this product deterioration, product properties and process characteristics have to be harmonized. In this study, food technology (reaction kinetics, stability concepts) was linked to process engineering (spray drying, drying kinetics, computational fluid dynamics) in order to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanism of lysine loss during spray drying and to derive optimization strategies.