CA3098799A1 - A process for drying yogurt - Google Patents

A process for drying yogurt Download PDF

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Publication number
CA3098799A1
CA3098799A1 CA3098799A CA3098799A CA3098799A1 CA 3098799 A1 CA3098799 A1 CA 3098799A1 CA 3098799 A CA3098799 A CA 3098799A CA 3098799 A CA3098799 A CA 3098799A CA 3098799 A1 CA3098799 A1 CA 3098799A1
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Canada
Prior art keywords
yogurt
drying
bulk
regular
moisture
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Pending
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CA3098799A
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French (fr)
Inventor
Shi Ning Guo
Jing Yu Guo
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Individual
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Individual
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Priority to CA3098799A priority Critical patent/CA3098799A1/en
Publication of CA3098799A1 publication Critical patent/CA3098799A1/en
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    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23CDAIRY PRODUCTS, e.g. MILK, BUTTER OR CHEESE; MILK OR CHEESE SUBSTITUTES; MAKING THEREOF
    • A23C1/00Concentration, evaporation or drying
    • A23C1/06Concentration by freezing out the water
    • A23C1/08Freeze-drying
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23CDAIRY PRODUCTS, e.g. MILK, BUTTER OR CHEESE; MILK OR CHEESE SUBSTITUTES; MAKING THEREOF
    • A23C9/00Milk preparations; Milk powder or milk powder preparations
    • A23C9/12Fermented milk preparations; Treatment using microorganisms or enzymes
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23CDAIRY PRODUCTS, e.g. MILK, BUTTER OR CHEESE; MILK OR CHEESE SUBSTITUTES; MAKING THEREOF
    • A23C9/00Milk preparations; Milk powder or milk powder preparations
    • A23C9/12Fermented milk preparations; Treatment using microorganisms or enzymes
    • A23C9/123Fermented milk preparations; Treatment using microorganisms or enzymes using only microorganisms of the genus lactobacteriaceae; Yoghurt
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23GCOCOA; COCOA PRODUCTS, e.g. CHOCOLATE; SUBSTITUTES FOR COCOA OR COCOA PRODUCTS; CONFECTIONERY; CHEWING GUM; ICE-CREAM; PREPARATION THEREOF
    • A23G9/00Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor
    • A23G9/32Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor characterised by the composition containing organic or inorganic compounds
    • A23G9/36Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor characterised by the composition containing organic or inorganic compounds containing microorganisms or enzymes; containing paramedical or dietetical agents, e.g. vitamins
    • A23G9/363Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor characterised by the composition containing organic or inorganic compounds containing microorganisms or enzymes; containing paramedical or dietetical agents, e.g. vitamins containing microorganisms, enzymes
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23GCOCOA; COCOA PRODUCTS, e.g. CHOCOLATE; SUBSTITUTES FOR COCOA OR COCOA PRODUCTS; CONFECTIONERY; CHEWING GUM; ICE-CREAM; PREPARATION THEREOF
    • A23G9/00Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor
    • A23G9/32Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor characterised by the composition containing organic or inorganic compounds
    • A23G9/40Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor characterised by the composition containing organic or inorganic compounds characterised by the dairy products used
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23GCOCOA; COCOA PRODUCTS, e.g. CHOCOLATE; SUBSTITUTES FOR COCOA OR COCOA PRODUCTS; CONFECTIONERY; CHEWING GUM; ICE-CREAM; PREPARATION THEREOF
    • A23G9/00Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor
    • A23G9/44Frozen sweets, e.g. ice confectionery, ice-cream; Mixtures therefor characterised by shape, structure or physical form
    • A23G9/46Aerated, foamed, cellular or porous products
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A23FOODS OR FOODSTUFFS; TREATMENT THEREOF, NOT COVERED BY OTHER CLASSES
    • A23CDAIRY PRODUCTS, e.g. MILK, BUTTER OR CHEESE; MILK OR CHEESE SUBSTITUTES; MAKING THEREOF
    • A23C2260/00Particular aspects or types of dairy products
    • A23C2260/05Concentrated yoghurt products, e.g. labneh, yoghurt cheese, non-dried non-frozen solid or semi-solid yoghurt products other than spreads; Strained yoghurt; Removal of whey from yoghurt

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  • Life Sciences & Earth Sciences (AREA)
  • Chemical & Material Sciences (AREA)
  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Food Science & Technology (AREA)
  • Polymers & Plastics (AREA)
  • Microbiology (AREA)
  • Inorganic Chemistry (AREA)
  • Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
  • Nutrition Science (AREA)
  • Dairy Products (AREA)

Abstract

Regular yogurt with 88% moisture is concentrated to around 65% moisture through straining process. The concentrated yogurt is then mixed with gas in proper proportions. The yogurt with evenly distributed micro-sized gas bubbles is then frozen to solid state. The frozen yogurt is loaded into the 1st vacuum microwave dryer with vacuum level lower than 2mbar. Once the moisture of the yogurt is lower than 25%, it is then transferred into a 2nd vacuum microwave dryer with vacuum level at around 20 mbar. When the yogurt is dried down to less than 5% moisture, it is stable and discharged from the 2nd vacuum microwave dryer.

Description

DESCRIPTION
Patent: A process for drying yogurt Field of the invention The present invention is related to drying yogurt at relatively low temperatures to maximally preserve its living bacteria.
Background of the invention Yogurt is a very ancient food. The first traces of it have been found between 10000 and 5000 BCE in the Neolithic period. Yogurt made its way through the centuries, spreading all around the world. Today, yogurt is widely recognized as a healthy food and is still part of many diets around the world.
Yogurt is characterized by its living bacteria, which, in addition to its high nutrient density and its palatability, have been demonstrated to improve lactose digestion (EFSA 2010b).
Recent studies suggest that yogurt could play an invaluable role on health.
Yogurt is basically fermented milk - milk that's heated and mixed with two types of live bacteria, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and streptococcus thermophilus. These are good bacteria, as in the probiotic kind that keeps our gut healthy.
Some companies opt for a voluntary "Live & Active Cultures" seal, which is administered by the National Yogurt Association and identifies yogurt with at least 100 million active bacteria per gram.
Some yogurts don't contain any live active bacteria at all. If yogurt is heat-treated after culturing, that step extends the shelf life but also wipes out the probiotics.
Yogurt left out at room temperature should be eaten within 2 hours, the USDA
recommends. Past that point, the longer it sits out, the more acidic and rancid it will get, killing off all the good bacteria.

Date Recue/Date Received 2020-11-12 The moisture content of most yogurts that are commercially available is in between 76.08%
and 80.07% (ISSN: 2642-1100, Analysis of Proximate Compositions and Physiochemical properties of some yogurt Samples from Maseru, Lesotho. 09 September 2019,).
Production, packaging, storage and transport all affect the quality of yogurt.
The lactic acid bacteria microorganisms have limited age in storage. Therefore, various strategies have been used to prolong shelf life such as low temperature storage and dried yogurt.
Regarding drying technologies, spray drying technology and freeze drying technology are the methods most widely used to dehydrate dairy products. Although freeze drying maintains the sensory, biological and nutritional characteristics of the dried product close to those of the fresh product, the high operational costs are a major drawback of freeze drying.
Spray drying is considered as the main technological drying process applied to yogurt due to its low operational costs and high production rate. But due to high process temperature, spray dried yogurt product presented low bacteria counts. (ISSN 1981-6723, powdered yogurt produced by spray drying and freeze drying: A review, August 2018). In addition, spray drying can only make powder product other than lumpy snacks.
Some studies have presented the potential of using microwave vacuum drying technology to dry yogurt. It shows that drying time is 80% shorter than freeze drying while no significant differences were seen in terms of properties, except for color and bulk density (ISSN: 2472-6419, MAR-2018, page No: 186-196).
On the market, there are commercial apparatuses claiming that they can dry yogurt or similar products with microwave vacuum drying, like patent U5931643762. But there are still some practical challenges for microwave vacuum drying technology, especially with regards to drying yogurt. In addition to low energy efficiency in microwave vacuum drying, if the process temperature is at room temperature, serious forming will happen and make the drying process out of control. This is because microwave heats objects internally compared to contact heat transfer methods, which are controllable in speed and direction. If the process temperature is below freezing point similar to freeze drying, then the surface area of the frozen yogurt will limit microwave vacuum drying speed. Similar to freeze drying, sublimation happens only on the surface of frozen substance, when frozen yogurt absorbs microwave energy more than what sublimation can bring away, the frozen yogurt will melt or/and explore due to internal pressure building up, resulting in drying process failure.
2 Date Recue/Date Received 2020-11-12 Effectively, microwave power distribution is always uneven and difficult to control, using low microwave power density is a practice choice which means longer drying time.
The invented process as described below, successfully solves the issues of drying yogurt with microwave vacuum drying technology. It shows the advantages compared to freeze drying in all aspects.
Brief description of the invention A process for drying yogurt at low temperatures to remain activity of all xxx is disclosed.
The regular yogurt with around 88% moisture is concentrated to around 65%
moisture through straining process. The concentrated yogurt is then mixed with gas in proper proportions. The yogurt with evenly distributed micro-sized gas bubbles is then frozen to solid status. The frozen yogurt is loaded into the 1st vacuum microwave dryer with vacuum level lower than 2mbar. Once the moisture of the yogurt is lower than 25%, it is then transferred into 2nd vacuum microwave dryer with vacuum level at around 20 mbar. When the yogurt is dried down to less than 5% moisture, it is stable and discharged from the 2nd vacuum microwave dryer.
3 Date Recue/Date Received 2020-11-12 1. Regular yogurt +
2. strain down to 65% moisture \/
3. mix with gas I
4. freezing
5. low temperature vacuum microwave drying i
6. room temperature vacuum microwave drying \'
7. discharge from vacuum chamber FIG. 1 Date Recue/Date Received 2020-11-12 FIG. 1 is a Schematic flow diagram illustrating the Steps in the process.
Description of the preferred embodiments As shown in FIG. 1, the preferred process involves if desired, the first step to select proper yogurt and keep its temperature at around 4C. Some yogurts are not in the scope of the process, like yogurt-flavoured beverages, heat-treated yogurt or pasteurized yogurt in which active probiotics are killed. But soy yogurt is considered as regular yogurt. If the yogurt is pre-concentrated, the second step of the invented process could be skipped if the moisture of the yogurt is lower than 70%. Most regular yogurt contain more than 75%
moisture.
In step 2, the regular yogurt is concentrated by straining or other methods without damaging live bacteria to remove some of its liquid, mainly whey. The result is thicker, creamier and higher in protein than standard yogurt. The moisture content of the concentrated yogurt is between 50%-70%. Desirable moisture is 60%. Thus, around 50%
of water in regular yogurt has been removed before moving into expensive evaporating steps below.
In step 3, air or nitrogen is injected into the concentrated yogurt. By stirring, the injected air/nitrogen becomes tiny bubbles and distributes evenly in yogurt. The tiny bubbles will become micro tunnels for sublimated vapour to escape in the next drying steps.
Depends on the sugar, fat and moisture contents of the yogurt, total air/nitrogen injected is 20% to 200% of the total volume of yogurt. Average size of the bubbles is 0.1 mm to 1 mm.
In step 4, the bubble formed yogurt is then shaped and frozen to bulk. The size of the bulk is between 1 mm to 30 mm, desirable size is a 15 mm cube or ball.
In step 5, the frozen yogurt bulk is loaded into a low temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber. The pressure of the vacuum chamber is in between 0.133 mbar to 5 mbar, desired pressure is 1.5 mbar. The corresponding sublimation temperature at the pressure is -15 C. Water in the yogurt is sublimated at -15 C when microwave energy is applied into the chamber. Because the structure of the yogurt is porous with large surface area, water vapour will be able to escape from center of the yogurt bulks easily, thus high power density of microwave can be applied to speed up the drying process at the low temperatures. When the moisture of yogurt bulk is dried down to lower than 20%, the Date Recue/Date Received 2020-11-12 amount of water in the yogurt is not enough to melt yogurt bulk even at room temperature.
Then the halfway dried yogurt is transferred into a room temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber, in which, vacuum level is in between 20-50 mbar as indicated at step 6. In the room temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber, the yogurt continues to receive microwave energy to evaporate the remaining water until it reaches the final moisture, which is in between 1-5%, the desirable final moisture is 2.5%. Due to porous structure and large surface area, the remaining water in the yogurt can be removed quickly resulting in a short drying process, thus the survival rate of live bacteria is even higher than pure freeze drying.
The dried yogurt will be discharged from the room temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber through an air-lock mechanism as indicated at step 7. Since the yogurt bulk can be load into and discharged from the microwave vacuum drying chambers through air-lock mechanisms, the whole invented process can be implemented to be a continuous process to achieve high production rate.

Date Recue/Date Received 2020-11-12

Claims (9)

Patent: A process for drying yogurt
1. A process for drying regular yogurt comprising of a step to select proper yogurt with moisture higher than 70% and live bacteria and keep its temperature at around 4C.
A step to concentrate the yogurt to remove some of its liquid by straining or other methods without damaging live bacteria. A step to injected air or nitrogen into the concentrated yogurt by stirring, the injected air/nitrogen becomes tiny bubbles and distributes evenly in yogurt. A step to freeze the bubble formed yogurt to shaped bulk. A step to load the frozen yogurt bulk into low temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber to absorb microwave energy to sublimate water in the yogurt bulk. A
step to transfer halfway dried yogurt bulk from low temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber to room temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber to continuously absorb microwave energy to evaporate water from the yogurt bulk.
A
step to discharge dried yogurt bulk from room temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber.
2. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said to concentrate the yogurt is to concentrate the yogurt to a moisture between 50%-70%.
3. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said to injected air or nitrogen into the concentrated yogurt is that total air/nitrogen injected is 20% to 200% of the total volume of yogurt.
4. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said tiny bubbles is that the average size of the bubbles is 0.1 mm to 1 mm.
5. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said shaped bulk is that the average size of the bulks is 2 mm to 30 mm.
6. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said low temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber is the chamber with pressure in between 0.133 mbar and 5 mbar.
7. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said room temperature microwave vacuum drying chamber is the chamber with pressure in between 20 mbar and 50 mbar.
8. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said halfway dried yogurt bulk is the moisture of the yogurt bulk lower than 20%.
9. A process for drying regular yogurt as defined in claim 1 wherein said dried yogurt bulk is the moisture of the yogurt bulk lower than 5%.
CA3098799A 2020-11-12 2020-11-12 A process for drying yogurt Pending CA3098799A1 (en)

Priority Applications (1)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
CA3098799A CA3098799A1 (en) 2020-11-12 2020-11-12 A process for drying yogurt

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Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
CA3098799A CA3098799A1 (en) 2020-11-12 2020-11-12 A process for drying yogurt

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
CA3098799A1 true CA3098799A1 (en) 2022-05-12

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CA3098799A Pending CA3098799A1 (en) 2020-11-12 2020-11-12 A process for drying yogurt

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