Pineapple is rich in vitamin and minerals. Drinking pineapple juice is popular around the world, and pineapple juice extraction has also become a promising business. This passage describes the main processing technology of pineapple juice, including selecting and washing fruits, fruit peeling and juice extraction, juice filtration and other post-treatment steps. AGICO provide a series of pineapple juicer machines to meet your demand.
Choose qualified pineapples
Select fresh pineapples whose pulp is soft and juicy, with less plant fibers. Premium pineapples are neither too sour nor too sweet. Exclude rotten and unripe fruits, including those injured by disease or pest. Qualified pineapple maturity should be more than 80%. The remnants in making pineapple cans are also raw material for making juice.
During fruit selecting process, we recommend you to use fruit sorting machine. It applies to spherical and oval fruits including pineapples. There are rolling bars spreading all pineapples out and sending them forward to the next pineapple processing machine. During this procedure, staffs take out unqualified fruits.
Wash pineapples thoroughly
Cleanliness is the premise to make healthy pineapple juice. The washing process aims to remove the stains and eliminate the pesticide residue on fruits. For this reason, fruit washing machine take the place of hand wash, widely adopted in juice industry. Generally, there are two types of fruit washers for you to choose from. The first type is equipped with rotating brush and high-pressure spray, effectively remove the stains on pineapples. The other one is surfing washing machine. There is a blower keep the water rolling, and the rapid and high-pressure water flows rinse the pineapple surface. Both types adopt thick stainless steel and scientific structure, ensuring high washing efficiency and least damage to fruits.
Pineapple juice extraction
Fruit pulping machine is the most common pineapple juicer machine. It adopts high rotation speed and centrifugal force to crush fruit, thus separate juice and fruit slag. This machine features high extracting speed, yielding clear and transparent juice. However, it can’t make full use of raw materials, and the juice yield is low. You can add some water to the pineapple pomace left in extraction, and squeeze it once again. This is a way to raise the juice yield ratio.
According to the specialty of pineapple, there is pineapple juicer machine that integrates peeling, slicing and extraction functions. The machine can separate pineapple peal and pulp automatically with scrapers. Pulp was transmitted to the pulping machine for refining, and the waste peels are discharged through outlet. AGICO pineapple peeling and extracting machine is easy to operate, with high juice output of 8-10 tons an hour. All parts that connect with raw materials are made of stainless steel, especially suitable for large-scale industrial production.
Pineapple juice filtration
After extraction, there remain some crude fibers, solid content and other impurities in the juice. Juice fine filter is used after fruit pulping machine. With high-speed centrifugal effect, it smash the pulp dimension to under 0.8mm, and remove all suspended solids and colloidal particle deposits. Juice refinement is necessary for further concentration and fermentation. You can choose sieve with different pore size to achieve varied effects.
The following pineapple juice processing steps
- Degassing is to expel the gas interfused in juice during processing. This procedure can prevent oxidization of fruit juice and corrosion of cans.
- High-short sterilization is to eliminate the bacteria and restrain the enzyme activity in fruit juice by instantly raising the temperature to more than 90℃.
- Cool the sterilized juice in a heat exchanger, where it’s temperature is reduced to about 50℃.
- Concentration is a way to exclude the water content in pineapple juice and increase the sugar and acidity degree. The concentration complete when the sugar content reach up to 57.5％～60％.
- Fill juice and seal cans with juice filling machines when the juice is cooled enough to pack. Sterilize the containers ahead of time, and remove the water content on bottles.
How to identify the quality of pineapple juice
Qualified pineapple juice appears light yellow or brown yellow. After adding water to 6 times the original volume, the juice should present the same flavor as pineapple, without bitter or strange taste.
In terms of the quantity of different contents, sugar content is 57.5％～60％, acidity more than 31%, and sodium benzoate less than 0.1%. Heavy metal content: lead ≤3mg/kg, copper ≤10mg/kg, and tin ≤200mg/kg.
