JPH0212547B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method for producing agar, and is particularly characterized in that the material, tokoroten, is made into granules with a diameter of about 3 mm and a length of about 5 mm, and the granules are dried using a continuous fluidized bed dryer. That is.

Agar is made by leaching the mucilage of red algae such as Amanita in hot water, boiling it, filtering it, cooling it to solidify it, and drying it.

Conventionally, agar was produced by cutting tokoroten into appropriate sizes and drying it naturally while exposing it to cold air to freeze the moisture content.

Recently, however, a method has been adopted in which the material Tokoroten is cut into a predetermined size and then dried with hot air at a temperature of about 90 to 110 degrees Celsius using a band-type ventilation dryer or a rotary ventilation dryer. ing.

However, this method has the following drawbacks.

In other words, in order to prevent uneven drying of the agar, the tokoroten must be cut into uniform shapes, but this pretreatment requires labor, and in order to increase the drying efficiency, it is necessary to increase the surface area exposed to hot air. It is desirable to cut the tokoroten as finely as possible, but since the tokoroten is soft and wet, the cut tokoroten may stick to each other or clump together. For this reason, it is not possible to cut the material very finely.Therefore, with a band type or rotary ventilation type dryer, the hot air does not hit the adhered parts, causing uneven drying or taking a long time to dry. In addition, since the tokoroten sticks to each other and clumps together, the agar contracts under the pressure of its own weight during drying, increasing the apparent specific gravity and lowering the porosity, prolonging the drying time. It has disadvantages such as a decrease in solubility in water, resulting in a so-called weak agar.

The inventor of the present invention, like this kind of tokoroten,
When using a fluidized bed dryer that dries with hot air at ~110℃, the particle size of Tokoroten is 3 mm in diameter and 5 mm in length.
It has been experimentally confirmed that particles as small as mm can be dried without sticking to each other or clumping.

The present invention is based on this knowledge, and as mentioned above, the tokoroten, which has been granulated in a granulator to a diameter of 3 mm and a length of 5 mm, is directly introduced into a continuous fluidized bed dryer by its gravity and allowed to fall, resulting in fine granules. Granular objects may adhere to each other,
This allows it to dry without hardening.

In other words, since the granules fall due to their weight and do not pass through other conveying equipment, combined with the characteristics of the continuous fluidized bed dryer, they are cut into pieces of about 3 mm in diameter and 5 mm in length and then transferred to each other. Drys without sticking.

The agar thus obtained is easily soluble in water and has a strong texture, making it suitable for use in honey beans, fruit punch, and the like.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

First, red algae such as amanita are processed in a conventional manner to produce amanita. This is put into a coarse crusher 1 which is made into an appropriate size to make it easier to feed into the granulator 2. Tokoroten discharged from the coarse crusher 1 is sent to a granulator. The granulator 2 is of an extrusion type, and an extrusion plate 4 having a large number of small holes of about 3 mm in diameter is attached to the front surface of an extrusion cylinder 3. The threads extruded through the small holes are cut and granulated by a rotary blade 5 provided on the front surface of the extrusion plate. It should be noted that the present invention is characterized in that the tokoroten can be finely reduced to about 3 mm in diameter and 5 mm in length, and the shape of the granulated product and the granulator are not limited to those of this embodiment.

Subsequently, the granular tokoroten is placed in a continuous fluidized bed dryer 6 and allowed to fall under the force of gravity, and is dried by blowing hot air at about 90 to 110°C. The fluidized bed dryer is
It is the same as a normal dryer of this kind, with ventilation panel 1
1, an air blowing fan 7 and a heater 8 are provided, and the tank is configured to blow hot air up into the tank through a ventilation panel. 12 is a product discharge port, and 9 is a dust collector.

The granular sludge placed in the tank is blown up by hot air supplied from the ventilator to form a fluidized bed, and is dried by contact with the hot air.
Here, the granular Tokoroten can be dried quickly because the entire surface is exposed to hot air with a relatively high flow rate, and since the individual granules do not stick to each other during drying, the particle size can be reduced. . Therefore, the apparent surface area becomes larger, the drying speed becomes faster, and since the granules become suspended during drying and are not subjected to pressing force, they are not compressed. This also becomes a factor in accelerating the drying speed. Therefore, the granules are dried in an extremely short time compared to conventional band-type ventilation dryers, etc., and the agar product is easily soluble in water, has a strong texture, and is of good quality.

Incidentally, since the exhaust gas has reached a considerable temperature, it is desirable to guide the exhaust gas to the heat exchanger 10 to preheat the air to be supplied to the heater 8.

As described in detail above, in the present invention, when drying Tokoroten to produce agar, it is first dried with a diameter of 3 mm.
granules with a length of about 5 mm, the granules are allowed to fall by gravity, and then introduced into a fluidized bed dryer and dried, and the granules are made into fine particles through a simple process. It has the advantage of being able to In other words, in the process of the method of the present invention, the granulated particles are passed through the air and dried throughout the process, so even fine granules with a diameter of about 3 mm and a length of 5 mm do not stick or solidify during the process. There is no chance of a festival. Also,
The fluidized granulation bed and dryer process this kind of tokoroten at 90℃~
It has been experimentally confirmed that when drying with hot air at about 110°C, fine particles up to 3 mm in diameter and 5 mm in length can be dried without sticking to each other.

Therefore, the tokoroten that has been cut into pieces as described above can be dried efficiently.

Moreover, because the drying speed is extremely fast, the resulting agar is easily soluble in water and has a strong texture.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

The figure is a front view schematically showing an agar manufacturing apparatus used to carry out the present invention. 1: coarser, 2: granulator, 6: continuous fluidized bed dryer, 9: dust collector.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Process the agar and other agar materials in a conventional manner to form granules, use a granulator to shape the granules into granules with a diameter of about 3 mm and a length of 5 mm. A method for producing agar, which comprises dropping it into a continuous fluidized bed dryer and drying it by blowing hot air at about 90 to 110°C.