New Juice Processing Solutions: from Concentrate to Bottle – PART 1 | HRS Heat Exchangers

New Juice Processing Solutions: from Concentrate to Bottle – PART 1

February 9, 2021 | Categories: Food - Opinion Piece | by

Processing fruit and juice concentrates into finished bottled drinks is relatively straightforward, but in order to maximise the quality of the finished product, attention to detail is needed at every stage. HRS Heat Exchangers is able to offer a complete processing solution from raw material to finished product. This not only includes thermal treatment for pasteurisation/sterilisation, but also all the necessary equipment to handle the product from raw material to finished pack.

De-packing, crushing and holding

While fruit juice concentrate is often delivered in bulk containers, juice for the production of high quality not-from-concentrate (NFC) is usually supplied in frozen form to maintain quality and freshness. This frozen unconcentrated juice is often supplied in lined 200 litre drums. While the drums themselves are convenient and easy to handle, the frozen concentrate requires breaking up and warming before it can be processed further and packaged.

 

 

The HRS I Series offers options to de-packs and crush (the IC Series) and melt (IM Series) this frozen juice (a process also sometimes known as re-melting) ready for storage or further processing. The IC Series features a roller conveyor which feeds individual drums into a tipper that empties them into the crusher. Here, a specially designed spiked roller crushes the solid ice into an icy slush, which is then transferred to the IM Series re-melting device.

Based on the tubular heat exchanger technology for which HRS is renowned, the IM Series raises the temperature of the juice from frozen to around 4°C in 90 seconds. From here, the cold liquid juice can be pumped to a holding tank, or straight into the next process step.

Capable of handling up to 60 drums (12,000 litres) per hour, the HRS I Series uses a number of existing HRS heat exchanger technologies (including HRS DTA Double Tube and HRS MI Multitube heat exchangers) together with an ice crusher to re-melt both large and small chunks of ice, providing optimal rates of heat transfer and energy efficiency.

One remelted, HRS can supply holding tanks of any required size, from 2,500 to 50,000 litres made to client’s bespoke specifications.

 

Read:

New Juice Processing Solutions: from Concentrate to Bottle – PART 2

New Juice Processing Solutions: from Concentrate to Bottle – PART 3