Dairy & Nutrition

Feeding and conveying in infant formula production

This product application sheet outlines the process solutions available for feeding and material handling of dry infant formula and milk powders.  Both the dry blend and the wet blend process including spray drying are described, with specific options available for the most efficient process design and equipment choices. In addition, full details are given with regards to the wet and dry cleaning procedures used for these processes.

Handling Inclusions in Ice Cream

The ice cream manufacturing industry is highly susceptible to fluctuating costs in value added ingredients as well as product quality affected by the percentage of these ingredients in the mix. Ingredients added to the semi frozen ice cream base mix are typically called “inclusions”. Inclusions can be comprised of anything from marshmallows to chocolate chips to coconut flakes. Coperion K-Tron feeders are used to accurately dispense the percentage of these high value inclusions in the mix, in order to control ingredient costs as well as improve product quality. This application sheet describes the application and defines the equipment designed for this sanitary operation.

Handling Probiotics

Global use of probiotics has steadily increased over the last 10 years, mainly in dairy products such as yogurts and yogurt beverages. However, even more recently, the introduction of probiotics in a powdered microencapsulated form for nondairy foods such as infant formulas, health food bars, breakfast cereals, snack foods, dry pet foods, and even chocolate has become commonplace in the food and petfood marketplaces. This growing trend in the use of probiotics can be attributed to the increased media exposure emphasizing that intestinal balance is critical to obesity management, cancer prevention, as well as improved overall immune system health.

Due to the delicate nature of the probiotic organism, the introduction of probiotics to the food processing or packaging stages requires special attention. The probiotic must be treated carefully during all stages of food processing to ensure that the probiotic viability is not affected and the overall efficacy is maintained. Coperion K-Tron loss-in-weight (LIW) feeders and sanitary vacuum conveying systems are used in the highly accurate introduction of probiotic powders to continuous mixers, as well as for the contained transfer and LIW batching to the final packaging container.

Spray Drying Milk Powder

In the wet blending/spray drying process, ingredients are blended with water in large batches and then pumped to a heat exchanger for pasteurization. The pasteurization step ensures that any harmful materials which may be present in the batch are destroyed. This step also has the advantage of ensuring uniform distribution of the ingredients.

After pasteurization the liquid is homogenized and the product may be concentrated by passing it through an evaporator or sent directly to the spray dryer. As shown in the flow diagram, the product is then atomized in the spray dryer. As droplets of product are fluidized in the dryer, water is evaporated and then dry powder deposits on the spray dryer bottom, where it is discharged with a sanitary Coperion rotary valve to a fluidized bed. There the product is typically dried further and cooled. The outlet air from the spray drying chamber still carries product (fines) which is normally ducted into cyclones and bag filters after the spray dryer. From there the product is discharged with Coperion rotary valves into the fines return line. The fines can either be transported with pneumatic conveying to the fluidized bed or back to the top of the spray dryer for agglomeration purposes. The actual conveying path is selected by the Coperion WYK diverter valve. After the fluidized bed, the finished powder passes through a sifter and is then pneumatically conveyed to storage silos or packaging lines, where it is deposited into bags or where it is canned.

Conveying & Metering Lactose

Lactose powder often presents a problem when used in a convey system with rotary valves. Typically, the valves will get caked with the lactose powder and layers of lactose or “hardened sheets” will build up on the valve rotor and housing. These extremely difficult layers on the valve pockets will then cause the valve to  squeal and eventually block. The specially designed valves by Coperion are specifically designed and engineered to address this issue and prevent this buildup and squealing.