Raisin Deagglomeration

Background / Requirement

 

Several large breakfast cereal manufacturers and bakeries have approached Quadro with an application to deagglomerate dried, sugared and oil coated raisins. The raisins are purchased in boxes of about 12" x 8" x 6" (30 cm x 20 cm x 15 cm) and tended to pack and stick together in this shape. In order to add these raisins to the cereal or bakery mix, the raisins needed to be in singular, free flowing form.

 

Due to the high cost of the raisins and strict quality control, hand screening was typically used in order to avoid damaging the raisins, knocking off the sugar and to ensure complete deagglomeration. This procedure was obviously labour intensive and expensive.

 

Comil Performance

 

The Comil was able to accept up to six inch lumps of raisins and deagglomerate them to 95% single and 5% double raisins. The raisins were not damaged and only a minimum amount of sugar was separated from them. A capacity of 2,000 lb/hr (900 Kg/Hr) was achieved on a continuous trouble-free basis.

 

Summary

 

The Comil’s low RPM, low energy, and gentle grinding action makes it ideal for this type of application where the product is fragile and product quality must be preserved. After installation, it was discovered that whole figs, dates, apricots and dried, sugared date and pineapple cubes could be deagglomerated in a similar fashion as the raisins with equally good results. No tooling changes were necessary in order to deagglomerate all the various products.

 

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