Food processing involves a wide range of machines from cleaning to packaging stage. Shortly for the basic process, food processing equipment has been classified, based on their common functions, namely
- Formulation process
- Mechanical process
Formulation process
Formulation or preparation process is an essential stage to produce an edible, fortified nutrients in the further food processing stages. This process works on the separation of rotten or lower materials from the standard products, cleaning, sorting, grading and peeling. By doing so, the products will be edible with fortified nourishments, same essence with high standard, good palatability, no foreign subjects or contaminants, that helps to extend the product duration.
Cleaning – Foreign objects and contaminants like soil, insects, chemicals, dust etc, can be discarded through wet and dry-cleaning process by cleaning on the surface of the staple. The equipment utilized for the wet process are soak/floatation tank, spray washers, washing system, filtering system, suspension system, sterilizers, ultrasonic cleaners and dry cleaning comprises air classifiers, brushers, abrasive separators, magnetic separators, screening separators.
Grading – Interrelated to the precluding, sorting process along with the assessment of food components of food particles like flavour, aroma, nature of the colour, etc, for determining the standard of food depends. Equipment employed are tungsten lights, image processors, laboratory equipment and the requirement of trained professionals for some sort of chores.
Peeling – Assist in removing the inedible or substandard materials on the surface, to expand the quality or appearance in the final product. Equipment includes like rotating blades, abrasive rollers, pressure vessels and conveyors/furnaces.
Sorting – Helps in categorizing and separating the unwanted materials and contaminated materials physical basis like shape, size, weight and also works similarly to the dry-cleaning process. Equipment used are sorting machinery, disc separators, machine vision sorting systems.
Mechanical process
A process of altering the shape of the staples in solid, semi-solid, liquid, jelly state. Alternatively, a starting pace for final product formation in the form of colour, shape, flavour. It involves decreasing or increasing of size, integration, mixing, that done for effectiveness, edibility, good standard, texture, palatability has been gone through this.
Size decreasing – The size of the solid base material can be decreased by compression, shear or impact force. Equipment used like impact mills, pressure mills, roll crushers, slicing machines, meat grinders and so on.
Size increasing – The size can be increased through mechanical processes, like agglomeration, forming, extrusion. Equipment are non-thermal extruders, refrigerated extruders, single and twin-screw agitators, rotating pans, tableting machine, rotating drums, confectionary moulders, bread moulders, etc.
Integration – It reduces the size of material and expands the food consistency in the form of semi-solid, liquid food. Equipment utilized are emulsifiers, colloid mills, homogenizers.
Mixing – This process helps in combining and dispersing, two or more components into another form for the perfect texture, essence of the final one. The components of the form like solid/solid, solid/liquid, liquid/liquid, liquid/gas. Equipment are turbine mixers, drum blenders, diffusive mixers, cutter mixers, sigma-blade mixers.
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