Food preparation line for blocks of frozen fruits

Materials: IQF Apples, IQF Cranberries, IQF Dates, IQF Pineapples, and various others

Granulator - IQF fruit deagglomeration

Project objective: Our client, located in Reading, PA, is a family owned and operated producer of bird feed, flour, animal feed and seed supply. The client was experiencing frustrations with a very manual and labor-intensive process of breaking up blocks of frozen fruits and seeds. Four operators unpack the fruit and break them up by hand. Each operator can do roughly 1 box per minute, or 4 operators doing 4 boxes per minute.

The industrial solution: The Granulator ECD is an industrial pre-breaker designed for the food industry. Our team of bulk material handling experts designed a small turnkey solution that included a 30-liter collection hopper for feeding blocks of IQF fruit into a granulator and safely discharge onto a food grade belt conveyor.

The ECD granulator is designed to accommodate the hygienic constraints of the food industry and any other industry needing to avoid cross contamination between batch runs. The industrial machine operates on the principle of low speed and high torque. A direct drive motor causes a drive shaft with 3 to four scrapper paddles to spin. Underneath the paddles is a U-shaped perforated screen that allows blocks of product to be broken up to a desired size, according to the mesh aperture. The whole assembly is manufactured from 304 stainless steel and the equipment is designed to facilitate easy and quick clean down procedures. The ECD stands for easy clean design. The ECD Granulator makes use of a drive shaft and bearing assembly on a guide rail system. This assembly allows one operator to easily and safely remove the entire drive assembly for full clean down. The classifying screen also is easy to remove via a quick latch tray and slide out assembly.

The 30-liter collection hopper features an interlocked access door and allows for the safe feeding of frozen blocks of food into the granulator (also known as a kibbler). If the hinged access door is in the open position, the machine cannot run. As the block encounters the spinner paddles, the scrapper blades break up the bits of frozen fruit. The perforated stainless-steel screen is sized according to the size of the fruit pieces and allows passage once the blocks are separated into its individual parts. Because the machine operates at low speed, the fruit pieces are not damaged.

As the material exits the granulator, they are collected by the food grade designed belt conveyor. The mechanical conveyor safely and gently transfers the frozen food products to the downstream industrial process for mixing and packaging.

The entire assembly is controlled by the Pal’Touch PLC HMI touch screen control software.

Palamatic Process has been supplying the powder and bulk solids industry with bulk bag handling equipment since 1992. In order to determine what solution is best for your project, contact one of our sales engineers.