Introducing the Dahmes ThermaShear™ Nozzle

Doing more drying in less space 

In most processing plants, the spray dryer is where the pressure lands. Tight timelines, limited floor space, older buildings, and products that don't behave the way the datasheet promised. You're asked to push more throughput, protect product quality, and hold down capital and energy costs, often all at once. Conventional atomization makes that a hard equation to solve. 

The Dahmes ThermaShear™ Nozzle was built for exactly that situation. 

What is the ThermaShear Nozzle? 

Spray drying always comes down to the same three steps: 

1. Feed a liquid or semi-liquid product — milk, protein concentrate, permeate, meat slurry. 

2. Atomize it into fine droplets. 

3. Hit those droplets with hot air so the water flashes off and you're left with a dry powder.

The ThermaShear Nozzle changes the middle step: how and where the atomizing happens. 

Instead of relying on very high liquid pressure to break up the feed (a traditional high-pressure nozzle) or a spinning disc (a rotary atomizer), the ThermaShear Nozzle uses hot, turbulent air to do two jobs at once: 

• Shear the liquid into droplets, and 

• Start drying those droplets the instant they form. 

It atomizes and dries simultaneously, using one stream of high-temperature air. 

How it works, in plain language 

Product flows through the center of the nozzle. Around it runs a stream of superheated compressed air, typically 500–1,000°F, and higher in some designs. A cooling jacket wraps the product tube so the feed doesn't cook inside the nozzle before it reaches the spray zone. At the outlet, that hot, high-velocity air hits the liquid, shreds it into droplets, and starts flash-drying them on the spot. 

You transfer far more energy into the product in a very small space at the top of the dryer. 

Why that matters: more work in a smaller footprint 

Every spray dryer is governed by two variables: how much air you move through the chamber, and how hot that air is. 

Traditional high-pressure systems move a lot of air at moderate temperatures, usually up to about 500°F at the throat. This nozzle technology flips that balance: much hotter air, and far less total airflow for the same amount of water removed. 

Airflow is a major driver of chamber size and building height, so that shift unlocks a useful equation: the same evaporation capacity in a smaller dryer and a smaller building. 

In our full-scale dryer at the Dahmes R&D Center, the ThermaShear Nozzle has at least doubled the water-removal rate on the same chamber compared with a conventional high-pressure configuration. At full scale, that kind of efficiency in a smaller footprint cuts capital cost on both the dryer and the building around it and brings energy costs down with it. 

Lower pump pressure, lower capital 

There's another practical payoff: the pumps. 

High-pressure spray systems usually run large, precision piston pumps at around 4,000 psi. They're expensive, maintenance-heavy, and critical to uptime. The ThermaShear Nozzle pumps product at much lower pressure, around 200 psi. That means simpler, far cheaper pump packages, on the order of $5,000 instead of $50,000 on a small system, with less wear, easier service, and fewer high-stakes failure points. 

For plants already short on maintenance hours, that's no small thing. 

Better for "tough" products 

Because the ThermaShear Nozzle uses a larger liquid orifice than a high-pressure nozzle, it handles feeds that give conventional nozzles trouble: chunky material like bone fragments in meat slurries, abrasive solids, and high-viscosity concentrates. 

Less constriction means fewer clogs, less nozzle wear, and less unplanned downtime for nozzle changes. That makes the technology especially compelling for lower-value or difficult products, where the priority is moving water, not fine-tuning powder. 

A practical step forward, not a science project 

The ThermaShear Nozzle isn't a lab curiosity or a white-paper concept. It's built on proven two-fluid atomization, with one change: the air does double duty as both the shearing force and the drying medium, with smart cooling to protect the feed. 

It's future ready, enabling a new class of compact dryer designs, and it's already validated in our own R&D under real operating conditions. 

The proof is in the powder 

Want to see what the ThermaShear Nozzle could do with your feed? Bring us your problem product. We'll run it at the Dahmes R&D Center, put it in the air, and show you what's possible. 

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