Bühler Aeroglide Introduces Hygienic Dryer for Coated Cereal Products
A breakthrough innovation for processors of coated ready-to-eat (RTE) cereal products was announced by Bühler Aeroglide and presented at interpack.
Bühler Aeroglide’s Food Safety team introduced a state of the art dryer designed for the clean, safe production of coated RTE cereal products. “The new Bühler Ceres offers maximized production, significantly reduced cleaning times, and energy efficiency with a game-changing design, a direct result of an active collaboration with cereal processors from around the world,” the company announced. A prototype of the dryer is showcased at interpack 2014, the process and packaging trade fair in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Ceres provides one of the highest levels of sanitary production for coated RTE cereal products available on the market today, with four patents pending and more than 30 other innovations in their portfolio.
“The Ceres dryer is the culmination of Bühler’s extensive knowledge in cereal production combined with research that represents the strength of collaborative innovation. Our food safety team has designed an unprecedented hygienic solution that fills a real need in the marketplace. Processors will find that with the new Ceres dryer, they will produce a better product, with greatly reduced downtime for cleaning, while using less factory floor space than they would typically need for the drying operation,” said Andy Sharpe, Bühler Aeroglide vice president of Business Development.
The new equipment features a number of sanitary innovations, including pitched floors and roofs, an integrated CIP system, a continuous belt washing system, comprehensive water management system and dozens of other hygienic design elements, which reduce the average cleaning downtime from 8 hours to 2 hours. Ceres also offers improved hygienic product contact surfaces, and reliable, lower risk components such as roller bearings and conveyor side guides constructed from FDA-approved non-metallic materials.
The Ceres dryer features a high velocity airflow which translates into more production that can be packed into a smaller footprint, reducing the need for valuable factory floor space. It also combines the latest technologies with a carefully considered design to minimise utility costs. From the new direct drive fans, to internal baffles, air curtains, insulated doors, floors and roofs, every step of the product and air flow has been optimized to increase both operational and energy efficiency.
Construction materials and manufacturing processes have all been improved to produce a dryer that lowers the risk of contamination, from an open channel frame structure that eliminates tubes, to more hygienic welding technologies that reduce growth areas for contaminants.