AEROSIL® fumed silica in the food industry

The addition of AEROSIL^® products helps to avoid agglomeration efficiently, enabling producers of such powders to deliver a constant product quality to every place of the world. Due to the high absorptivity of the silica, food powder products treated with AEROSIL^® fumed silica show extended storage stability.

AEROSIL^® fumed silica can be applied to powdered food ingredients by usual powder mixing processes. Detailled recommendations on mixing technology can be found in the brochure Technical Information No. 1213, available for download in our Literature Database.

Many food ingredients are spray dried. Examples are vegetable powder, whey powder, fruit powder, egg powder, or coffee creamer. During production caking can occur at the inner walls of the spray drier, which makes regular cleaning necessary. The addition of AEROSIL^® fumed silica directly into the spray tower, separately from the spray dried slurry, reduces the caking and avoids expensive downtimes. Furthermore, this modus operandi saves an additional mixing step and increases the throughput. This is the most efficient way to apply silica as a flow- and anti-caking aid.

Spray-dried fruit powder without
and with AEROSIL^® 200 F

Spray-dried vegetable powders
with AEROSIL^® fumed silica 

Food products that are dissolved in water sometimes show retarded wetting or build up lumps, when stirred into water. One further advantage of the addition of a hydrophilic AEROSIL^® grade to such a powder is a better wettability and a reduction or even no formation of lumps. This is due to the fact that the silica envelops the powder, thus acting as a space holder between the individual powder particles leading the water into the spaces. In addition the extremely fine AEROSIL^® fumed silica provides good color retention of powders and a high transparency once these powders are stirred into water.