1. Spray drying/nanoencapsulation
2. Microencapsulation
3. Particle size measurement by laser diffraction in dry method
4. Particle size measurement by laser diffraction in liquid process

Feature 1 aims to remove the aqueous content of products by a rapid drying technique, which minimally damages the compounds of interest, so it can be used in the processing of a wide range of products, including food. In addition, it can be used to microencapsulate certain products while preserving their properties (functional compounds, fermenting microbiota, proteins, etc.), resulting in dry encapsulations of 2-25 µm. Examples: drying of milk, corn starch, dyes, etc. and encapsulation of probiotics, functional compounds and others.

Feature 2 allows to generate beads and encapsulate liquids resulting in spheres in the size of 150 µm - 4 mm, functionality widely used in the food industry, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical industry, etc. Applications:

• Encapsulation of oils
• Encapsulation of probiotics
• Helicobacter pylori treatment
• Increased survival at intestinal level
• Encapsulation of polymers
• Capsules for cosmetics
• Conservation of animal spermatozoa
• Cell therapy (e.g. stem cells in osteoarthritis treatment).

The features 3 and 4 complete the two previous ones, since they allow the exact measurement of particle size, both of those suspended in liquid media and of dry particles. In addition, it can be directly useful for other research groups that, without using features 1 and 2, may require the measurement of the particle size of a given product and even the cell size of eukaryotic and many prokaryotic cells in the course of their research.

Applications:

• Dry measurement: for powdery materials with particle size between 0.1 -1000 µm.
• Liquid measurement: for dispersions and emulsions with particle sizes between 0.1 - 200 µm.