Manufacturers of dairy-based food such as ice cream, yogurt, and snack foods often look for ways to differentiate their product lines by adding pieces of colorful, fun, or uniquely flavored ingredients as decorative toppings or inclusions.
These are often irregularly shaped pieces of chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, cereals, or grains, which need to be the right size and shape to maximize their visual effect.
When sizing these pieces of ingredient, the ultimate aim is to achieve close to 100% of the particles falling into the desired specified particle size band otherwise there is waste and a loss in efficiency as re-work has to be done.
The method used to create these pieces correctly matters greatly. For example, impact mills can create a wide particle size distribution, in which case the fines and oversized particles will have to be screened out.
The oversized pieces can possibly be re-milled, but the fines will be discarded and wasted if they are deemed unusable. Crushing equipment may be considered an option, but it too will often create a wide PSD.
An added complication with foods such as these is that many of them are very heat sensitive due to the high natural fat or moisture content. In this regard, the invested/transferred energy imparted to the ingredient has to be as low as possible.
The Quadro® Comil® offers the ideal solution due to its low speed, low energy conical milling action which means there is very little material temperature increase.
Ingredient particles are gently passed through a sizing screen by the action of a rotating impeller. The screen aperture size and shape can be chosen and adjusted for each and every application to achieve the desired particle size and shape. Different impeller profiles can be used to minimize the undesired fine particles and lessen waste.
Both specialty and large food manufacturers have deployed Quadro® Comils® for challenging size-reduction applications. Combining decades of reliable service and energy-efficient operation along with application experience, our customers have achieved robust ROI on their investments.