3 Ways Agitation Equipment Leads to Greater Efficiency For the Food Processing Industry

Commercial agitation equipment has applications across many diverse industries, including paint production, pharmaceutical manufacturing and food processing. Regardless of the application, it is important that the equipment employed is designed with several key factors in mind. Examples of these parameters include the type and density of materials to be combined, quantities involved, environmental conditions and the desired end product result. With this information, designers and engineers can develop mixing equipment and solutions to achieve the desired results for each individual situation.

Improvements in agitation equipment design have led to substantial advancements in the food processing equipment design services. Thanks to this technology, food manufacturers have been able to achieve greater economies of scale in their production efforts, while demonstrating noticeable improvements in food quality and safety. A lot of tweaking and testing was required for this to occur, however. Clearly, there is a huge difference between mixing up a small batch of pastry dough in a test kitchen and achieving the same end results on a consistent basis in much larger quantities. The challenge is to be able to translate the results from smaller test situations to larger scale production environments. Custom-designed agitation equipment makes this possible.

Here are 3 Ways Advances in Commercial Agitation Equipment Has Benefited the Food Processing Industry:

1. Saves time. As the saying goes, "time is money" and professional agitation equipment can yield tremendous savings in this area. Compared with test kitchen mixers, industrial mixing equipment is much larger and is therefore able to process larger batches at a time. This directly translates into substantial time savings. Furthermore, industrial versions are usually more powerful and able to process an individual batch more quickly. What takes ten minutes in a test kitchen might only take two or three in an industrial mixer.

2. Uses fewer ingredients. Agitation equipment can also lead to greater economies in terms of the amount of raw ingredients used during the production process. For example, well-designed mixing equipment can reduce waste by effectively removing more ingredients from the sides of the mixing container. By leaving less unincorporated residue in the vessel, a smaller amount of waste by-product is produced. This leads to higher yield and increased profitability for the food processor.

3. Requires less energy. Designers and engineers who develop commercial agitation equipment are always on the lookout for ways to save on energy costs during the production process. However, product quality and consistency cannot be sacrificed to achieve this end. Therefore, they must find the "wasted" energy within the process and eliminate it, while maintaining the level of input needed to produce the desired end result. A static mixer which involves no moving parts is one type of agitation equipment that uses less energy than traditional mechanical options. With these mixers, ingredients are injected into a piping configuration where they are swirled and combined. Although this type of mixer won't work in all situations, they do provide substantial energy cost savings in the appropriate settings.

Without question, improvements in commercial agitation equipment have led to many positive improvements in the food processing industry over the years.

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