Spray drying is a method of producing a dry powder from a liquid or slurry by rapidly drying with a hot gas.

Most of the drying is done using microwaves to evaporate the water, but the final drying is done by convection heating, to avoid problems of arcing with metal pieces in the laundry.

Since it is immiscible with water, the main constituent of biological tissue, water must first be removed in the process of dehydration.

However, according to Iraq, since special dryers could not be obtained, this work did not progress.

Every morning, the port becomes one giant drying rack piled with clothes, shoes and personal items that sundown will find dried, packed into backpacks and moving on to their trip of hope.

Forensic sampling and analysis of spray drying equipment present at Al Hakam in 1996 revealed no traces of biological warfare agents.

In most parts of the United States, the minimum moisture content that can be generally obtained in air drying is about 12 to 15 percent.

Instead of drying the liquid in one stage, the drying is done through two steps one at the top (as per single effect) and one for an integrated static bed at the bottom of the chamber.

Air is the heated drying medium however, if the liquid is a flammable solvent such as ethanol or the product is oxygen sensitive then nitrogen is used.

The most common spray dryers are called single effect as there is only one drying air on the top of the drying chamber (see n 4 on the scheme).

If anthrax spore were preserved and stored in optimal conditions, it could have been viable for many years, leaving the possibility that, with improvements in Iraq's spray drying capabilities after 1992, the bulk agent could have been dried.