Aeroglide dryer innovations focus on food safety

With customer collaboration as a key component of the design phase, Bühler Aeroglide has developed a number of innovations focused on sanitation and cleanability, and are incorporating them into the latest generation of their dryers, roasters, and other thermal processing systems for food and feed applications.

Improvements in sanitary design come in the form of one-piece slab roofs and floors that are pitched to one side of the machine to eliminate water pooling;a comprehensive water management system that directs water and other cleaning fluids to a drain;a non-tubular open channel frame design that eliminates water and fines entrapment areas;minimized flat horizontal surfaces, crevices and other collection points making cleaning easier and faster;vertical and horizontal support members that have been turned 45° to further decrease cleaning time;access doors that feature a continuous and polished weld on all seams combined with surface mounted hinges and handles, providing an unbroken barrier against water collection and bacteria growth;and a number of other design improvements.
 

“This is not a package we slap on a dryer and call it ‘enhanced’ or ‘extra sanitary’,” states Steve Blackowiak, Food Safety Manager at Bühler Aeroglide. “These innovations are the result of a mindset that is core to our engineering mentality and permeates the design of all our products. Food safety has been Aeroglide’s #1 concern in system design since our beginning in 1940.”

The company debuted many of these customer-inspired sanitary innovations in a dryer installed in the recently-opened FDA-grade Food Innovation Center at Bühler’s Minneapolis headquarters. The new lab allows Bühler customers to run process trials on a complete extrusion line including raw material handling, extrusion, drying, grinding, and bulk packaging.

More details of this dryer can be seen on the PotatoPro facebook page.

Source: Bühler Aeroglide