RU2721858C1 - Apparatus for production of short-cut hollow pasta products - Google Patents

Abstract

FIELD: food industry.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to the food industry. Apparatus for production of short-cut hollow pasta products includes a high-temperature extruder with a system for controlling and maintaining the heating temperature of the forming channel of the matrix. Plant is equipped with a conveyor with a band of radiotransparent material installed at an angle in a metal nonmagnetic body, at the bottom of the housing there is a waveguide output of energy - a microwave generator, and at the top of the housing there is a waveguide outlet of matched load for recycling unabsorbed energy, and in the conveyor body temperature and humidity sensors are installed with a controller which controls power of the power source.

EFFECT: invention allows to reduce consumption of consumed energy and increase efficiency of the process, as well as during production, to increase shelf life of ready pasta products.

1 cl, 1 dwg

Description

The invention relates to techniques for microwave heating and can be used in the food industry, in particular for preparing pasta ready for sale.

It is known to use a microwave press for pasta, in which the crushed dough is preheated with a microwave generator for subsequent extrusion, through a forming matrix, to obtain a raw pasta product [1]. After which the product must be sent for drying.

The closest, in technical essence and the achieved results to the proposed invention, is a high-temperature extruder for the production of dough pieces, including: a receiving hopper, a press chamber, a matrix with an placed induction controlled heating element around the perimeter [2]. However, the use of this device does not allow you to get pasta ready for storage, as they must be subjected to additional drying.

The peculiarity of drying the semi-finished pasta is that during the drying process, their structural and mechanical properties and sizes change. During drying, the moisture content of the product decreases from 40% to 13%. At the same time, there is a gradual reduction in size and shrinkage of products to 8% of the volume. Raw products coming to drying (semi-finished products) are a plastic material and retain their characteristic properties, up to about 20% humidity. With a change in humidity from 20 to 16%, they lose these properties and acquire qualitatively different characteristics characteristic of an elastic material. At this humidity, pasta is an elastic-plastic body.

Starting with approximately 16 percent moisture, they become a solid elastic body and retain this state until the end of drying.

Under mild drying conditions, i.e. Slowly drying the product with air with poor drying ability, the difference in humidity between the outer and inner layers is small, since moisture from the wetter inner layers has time to move to the dried outer layers. As a result, all layers of the dried products are reduced almost uniformly. A very important conclusion follows from this: pasta can be dried under fairly harsh conditions, without fear of cracks in them, up to 20 percent humidity.

When the product reaches such a moisture content, in order to avoid cracking, further drying should be carried out under mild conditions, slowly removing moisture. Especially carefully, it should be removed at subsequent (final) stages of drying, when the products reach a moisture content of 16% or lower.

The main difference between microwave dehydration and traditional drying methods lies precisely in the “volume” of heating: heat does not penetrate the product from the surface, but is formed immediately in the entire volume of the heated material. In this case, moisture is squeezed out onto the surface, from where it is easily removed by a stream of warm air.

In the case when microwave energy is used for pasta semi-finished product obtained by hot pressing [2], the outer surface does not interfere with the further drying process, since in this case the entire volume of the product will be used. Since the drying time is only a few seconds, this allows the use of a conveyor system for conveying pasta to the microwave dehydration zone.

Microwave drying also has the advantage that it does not have heat transfer from the heater or coolant, i.e. heat is distributed through the product itself. The uniformity of drying, in particular, prevents the formation of residual stresses in the structure of the test, due to the uneven shrinkage during drying of pasta.

An additional positive effect should be noted and the fact that under the influence of an intense microwave field, microflora is almost completely destroyed (product disinfection), which leads to a significant increase in the shelf life of the obtained product.

The technical result of the invention is to increase the drying efficiency.

The problem is solved in that, in contrast to the prototype, in the device for producing tubular short-cut pasta with the aim of producing dried pasta, an conveyor with an additional tape made of radio-transparent material is installed at an angle in a metal non-magnetic casing, at the bottom of which there is a microwave energy source a generator with a waveguide output, at the bottom there is a coordinated load for utilization of unabsorbed energy, and for regulating the drying parameters in the case where the conveyor is located, temperature and humidity sensors are connected associated with the control controller of the microwave generator.

The drawing shows a diagram of the proposed installation. The installation consists of a high-temperature extruder 1, a control system and maintain the heating temperature of the forming channel of the matrix 2 for the production of short dough pasta blanks with a moisture content of about 20% moisture. The resulting pasta product falls on a tape of radio-transparent material of the conveyor 3 located inside the metal inclined casing 4, at the bottom of which there is an energy source - a microwave generator 5. At the top of the casing, a matched load waveguide 6 is installed to utilize the non-absorbed energy, and to control the drying parameters in the casing the conveyor is equipped with temperature and humidity sensors with a controller 7 controlling the power of the microwave generator. The obtained disinfected short-cut hollow pasta with a moisture percentage of less than 13% from the conveyor belt fall into the packaging container 8.

The main advantages of the proposed installation are obtaining suitable for sale pasta disinfected product, increasing the productivity of the installation for receiving pasta, while reducing energy costs.

Sources of information

1 Patent RU2502260 C2 Microwave pasta press. Published 12/27/2013.

2 Patent RU 2666795 C1 Macaroni high-temperature press. Published on September 12, 2018 Bull. No. 26.

Claims (1)

Installation for producing short-cut hollow pasta, including a high-temperature extruder with a system for regulating and maintaining the heating temperature of the forming channel of the matrix, characterized in that in order to obtain suitable pasta for sale, it is equipped with an angle-mounted conveyor with a non-magnetic metal casing of radio-transparent material, a waveguide energy output — a microwave generator — is installed at the bottom of the case, and a matched load waveguide output is installed at the top of the case to utilize unabsorbed energy, and temperature and humidity sensors are installed in the conveyor case with a controller controlling the power of the energy source.

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