A spray drying process can scale-up directly from the laboratory to a final production scale. However some quality attributes of the product may change during the scale-up, namely particle size, solvent content and bulk density. Labscale development studies are particularly useful for producing small quantities of prototype formulations in early stages of development. Nevertheless, the small dimensions of the drying chambers limit the residence time, and therefore the droplets need to be small enough in order to dry completely before leaving the drying chamber or colliding with its walls.

There are, however, lab scale units that include innovative features to enable the drying of larger droplets (100 mm and larger). These units represent an excellent platform to mimic the main product attributes of the industrial scale spray dried particles and can be used at early stages of development to assess the criticality of particle size and other powder attributes in the quality of the product.