Food freezing is a way of preservation of food, in use of mankind for quite a while and is considered one of the basic and fundamental way of preserving food at longer period of time. This method requires some special equipment to go through and make possible the freezing of the food so that it could be used over longer periods. Let’s have a look at special equipment to overlook food freezing and freezing technologies.
Food freezing equipment are categorized with respect to various methods. According to heat transfer method, various types of equipment are used for food freezing process. Let’s have a look at some of these equipment.
Air-Blast Freezers
First one is Air-Blast Freezers. A sharp freezing way or blast room is a cold storage that has been particularly built and prepared to work at low temperatures for freezing. Regardless of whether this room is outfitted with additional refrigeration limit as well as fans for air circulation, there is regularly no controlled wind stream over the products, and thus freezing is typically moderate. This sort of equipment is still utilized in some areas for bulk storage, but isn’t reliable for processed foods at all.
Tunnel Freezers
Second one is Tunnel Freezers. In this technique, refrigerated air is flowed over the items that are set on trays that remain in or go through the tunnel in racks or trolleys. The racks are orchestrated to provide air space between each layer of trays. The racks or trolleys can be moved in and out of refrigerator whenever needed. Tunnels are additionally utilized for freezing hanging meat bodies carried on a suspension transport or in particularly structured racks. For all intents and purposes all food items can be freeze in a tunnel refrigerator. Whole, diced, and sliced vegetables might be solidified in containers or unpacked in a 30-40 mm profound layers on trays. Spinach, broccoli, meat patties, fish fillets, and packaged foods could be freeze in packages.
Belt Freezers
Another equipment is Belt Freezers. The first belt freezers fundamentally comprised of a wire mesh belt conveyor in a blast room, which fulfilled the requirement for a continuous product flow. Present day belt freezers ordinarily use vertical airflow, compelling the air through the layers, which makes great contact with all particles of product. For this purpose, the food items should be equally conveyed over the whole belt zone. If, at a region, where the product layer is non-existing, there is less protection from the air, this will bypass the thicker layers. This will bring about ineffectively freeze items and therefore, it is highly recommended to spread items properly and evenly over belt width under every single working condition.
Contact Freezers
Another type is Contact Freezers: In this type of freezer, the product is either in direct contact with the freezing media, immersed or indirectly by being in contact with a belt or plate containing the freezing media.
Cryogenic Freezers
Another type is Cryogenic Freezers. This type of freezers are not associated with a refrigeration plant. The heat-transfer medium is nitrogen or carbon dioxide condensed in modern industrial installations and dispatched to the food freezing production line in low-temperature well-protected pressure vessels.
These are some of the most widely used freezing equipment across the globe.