I was contacted by one of our overseas distributors for a coating application.  Their customer wanted to use a small amount of water to spray on the surface of bagels.  The thin layer of water will create surface tension for sesame seeds to stick to the top of the bagel.  We went over some details of the application to determine the best product.

Since the sesame seeds were being applied prior to baking, the amount of water used affects the bake time. Therefore, it is important to control the amount of water applied.  They wanted to spray the water only on the top of the bagels, and not on the baking sheets.  The bagels were lined up in four rows per pan.  Since the pans were moving on a conveyor, a flat fan spray nozzle pattern would work best to coat the entire width.  And since they needed to direct the water only to the tops of the bagels, the No-Drip option was a necessary feature. 

With liquid solutions, the smaller the droplet size, the greater the fluid surface area which can be exposed.  With larger droplet surface area potential, less liquid can be used to cover the same target area (bagel tops in this case).  For this application, I ended up recommending model AF9010SS Internal Mix Atomizing Nozzle with a flat fan spray pattern and No-Drip option.  They needed a minimal amount of water to keep the sesame seeds in place without saturating the surface. By adding compressed air, we can shear the water into a much smaller droplet size range.  And as mentioned above, we can use less liquid to cover the same area.   

The stainless-steel construction makes the Atomizing Nozzle corrosive resistant for Food and Beverage applications.  The flat fan pattern is able to reach multiple bagels and hit the target area evenly.  The No Drip option is a patented design to keep the liquid from dripping out of the Atomizing Nozzles during off-cycles.  When the compressed air is turned off at the nozzle, a valve inside the body will create a seal on the liquid side.  This No-Drip function enhances the Atomizing Nozzles for intermittent processes as the liquid remains inside the body for quick spraying. The Atomizing Nozzles with the No-Drip option can give you the best performance for fast, direct spraying.  Our customer was extremely happy with the performance. They shot a short video to show the operation. 

If you have liquid that you would like to spray evenly, efficiently, and effectively, EXAIR Air Atomizing Nozzles can do that for you.  We offer three different port sizes with a variety of liquid flow rates and spray patterns.  If you would like to discuss more about an application or need help in selecting the correct model, an Application Engineer will be happy to assist you.  For the customer above, the bagels had plenty of sesame seeds to satisfy the application requirement.      

John Ball
Application Engineer
Email: johnball@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_jb

Photo: Sesame seeds by allybally4b.  Pixabay Content license.