Overview of food extrusion machine

Extrusion is one of the most commonly used food manufacturing processes. Its versatility allows the production of a wide variety of foods. Food extrusion machine was developed in the 1930s for the production of dry pasta and breakfast cereal pellets. Used in pet food manufacturing in the 1950s. The application of continuous extrusion processing has expanded over the past 80 years as the technology has been developed as an alternative to food texturing, mixing, shaping, reacting and cooking.

Overview of Extrusion Technology

A food extruder is a short bioreactor that continuously converts raw materials into various final products. The advantage of extrusion is that it often enables the processing of food products in one manufacturing step. It is a widely used technology that produces hundreds of food products, including traditional snacks, breakfast cereals, pet food, ingredients, chewing gum, candy, pasta, textured vegetable protein, pre-made cookie dough, baby food, processed cheese, bread Wait.

Simply put, an extruder is a continuous processing machine consisting of one or two screws (consisting of a variety of screw elements) that are mounted on shafts and rotate in a fixed closed housing called a barrel. Single screw extruders use one screw and twin screw extruders use two intermeshing screws. Both types of extruders operate in a similar manner, providing raw material transport, compression, mixing, cooking, shearing, heating, cooling and shaping of the final product.

As extrusion has been introduced into various industries, it has replaced less efficient technologies such as batch processing and has also allowed the development of new products. The success of extrusion technology in the food industry is mainly due to its ability to continuously manipulate very viscous and complex fluids and powders. The basic processing functions within the unit are easily modified: heat and mass transfer; kneading and mixing; micro-mixing; and chemical reactions, cooking and texturing.

There are four main types of extrusion processes: cold extrusion, hot extrusion, steam induced extrusion and co-extrusion. Cold extrusion is used to gently mix and shape dough without direct heating or cooking in the extruder. It is mainly used in the production of pasta and dough. Hot extrusion performs thermomechanical transformation of raw materials under pressure through short time and high temperature conditions. This type of extrusion is mainly used for cooking ingredients to produce textured food and feed products. Steam-induced expansion defines the melt expansion at the die exit due to water flashing, resulting in a highly expanded product. Subsequent processing determines the textural properties of the extruded product. Examples of products produced using this type of extrusion are puffed snacks and breakfast cereals.

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