Food Grade Drying – New Application Methodology

Fluid Energy Processing & Equipment Company is proud to offer the ThermaJet® Flash Drying System for Soy Products and other food processing applications. In today’s health-conscious society, many food processors and consumers are turning to soy as a natural additive for the food products they make and eat.

The ThermaJet system from Fluid Energy has had tremendous success in processing a wide variety of soy by-products into value-added ingredients for human consumption as well as animal feeds.

For these processes, the ThermaJet system can be used to dry wet soy centrifuge or filter cakes into lump-free, discrete powders having less than 12 percent moisture. Since the original filter cakes contained moisture contents of up to 80 percent, inlet operating temperatures were set to 1000 °F, while outlet temperatures measured around 250 °F.

In soy processing applications, wet soy “cake” – similar in consistency to mashed potatoes – is blended with recycled, dry product to condition the feed into an easily conveyed material. The mixture enters the ThermaJet drying chamber through a rotary airlock. Here, the blended feed is rapidly swept into the drying chamber by a high-velocity, hot gas stream. The turbulent hot air quickly deagglomerates – or breaks apart – the feed, vastly increasing the amount of surface area exposed to the drying fluid. This process facilitates the instantaneous heat exchange necessary for flash drying, while minimizing over-exposure of the product to heat, which can cause “toasting”.

The ThermaJet system employs centrifugal force to continuously recycle under-dried material back through the drying zone. The circular or “doughnut” shape of the dryer flings the heavier, wet or lumpy material to the outside radius, while the dried, deagglomerated particles are pulled from the dryer by an exhaust fan.

The dried product is then separated from the air stream by a cyclone, while exhaust gases(containing the fines) are passed through a dust collector or scrubber. A typical ThermaJet System encompasses a process blower, capable of delivering air pressures of up to 5 psig; a direct-fired, natural gas, air heater; a ThermaJet dryer ring; a cyclone; a baghouse and/or scrubber; an exhaust fan and PLC-based controls.

The feed portion of the system utilizes a wet cake belt feeder, a dry product recycling feeder, a paddle mixer and a screw conveyor – used to transport dry recycled material from the product collection point into the paddle mixer.

Fluid Energy Processing and Equipment has remained open throughout the COVID pandemic. We hope you are all staying healthy.