Quality
Waterjet Newsletter – 08/15/2006
Ice Blasting for Food and
Biomedical Applications Last year Kluz and Geskin
presented an interesting paper(*) on ice blasting
for food industry and biomedical applications. Here are the highlights. Ice blasting has a great potential
as a major food peeling technology. The current food peeling technology
requires expensive and complicated equipment, usually using mechanical
removal methods. The variety and unpredictable shapes of food materials
present major challenges. Use of chemicals is common which generate pollution
streams. Stream blasting is another current peeling technology. Its erosion
effectiveness is associated with the steam temperature and thus these two
factors cannot be controlled separately. Ice blasting consumes six-times less
energy than steam blasting and allows separate controls of its erosion
effectiveness and temperature. Ice blasting is a clean process. It does not
use chemicals and therefore does not generate pollution streams. It can be even
used to clean other food processing equipment effectively. Ice blasting also has a potential
to be used as dermatological tool for surgical skin treatment. Experiments were done to
demonstrate the feasibility of ice blasting. In the ice generation device
(“Ice Boiler”) that was shown in the article, a mist nozzle generates a water
spray. The water spray passes through a layer of liquid nitrogen and forms
ice particles. Liquid nitrogen absorbs the heat as a result of this phase
change, evaporates, and is thus consumed gradually. The ice particles are
then transferred to an ice blaster. Two types of ice blasters were shown.
Both of them feed ice particles into a mixing chamber where a stream of
compressed air generates vacuum and sucks in the particles. One of them feeds
ice particles with a screw conveyor and the other simply submerges the mixing
chamber in a fluidized bed of ice particles. These simple devices do not cost
much and work well. Ice blasting experiments were then
conducted on several food products with these parameters: ice flow rate 150
g/min, ice particle diameter 15-20 micron-m, air pressure 5.5 bar, ice particle
temperature -170°C, nozzle diameter 5
mm, and standoff distance 0.05-0.1 m. Peeling tests were done on Idaho
potato, red potato, carrot, and
apple. Photos of tested samples clearly showed that the peeling was very
effective and no excessive material removal had occurred. Chicken skin
contaminated with oil-based paint was also cleaned effectively, along with
removal of superficial skin tissue. A de-painting test was also done on a
stainless steel sample with success.
In a word, this study has demonstrated the feasibility of using ice
blasting in food industry and dermatology. * Kluz, K. & Geskin, E.S. (2005) Application of ice
powder in biomedical and food industries, in Mohamed Hashish (Ed.),
Proceedings of the 2005 WJTA American Waterjet Conference, Houston, Texas,
USA, August 21-23, Paper 2A-3. Beyond High
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