With the quickening pace of life, simple and fast food has gradually regained the popularity of people all over the world. Earlier, the news of instant noodle market in China broke out. Recently, the United States has reported the first growth in frozen food sales in five years. These indicate that convenience foods still occupy an important position.
In the beverage industry, bottled ready-to-drink beverages, as the most convenient and fast beverage products, also have great attraction to people. According to research data, the compound growth rate of bottled and instant coffee has reached over 34% in China. There are various kinds of bottled drinks, which may involve different processes such as squeezing, extraction, filtration and so on. Today, let's talk about the sterilization and filling that bottled drinks need to face.
Selection of beverage sterilization
The sterilization of drinks will affect subsequent storage, which is a very important link in the production of drinks. In the long history of food development, a variety of equipments, such as ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization equipment, ozone sterilization machine, ultraviolet sterilization equipment, irradiation sterilization equipment, pasteurization machine and so on, have been developed.
Different drinks require different ways of sterilization, pasteurized sterilization is used in acidic drinks, alkaline drinks can be sterilized at high temperature. The choice of sterilization mode is also related to the filling equipment, the temperature of glass bottle packaging should not be too high, so as to avoid the phenomenon of bottle explosion.
Ultraviolet radiation equipment has weak penetration and is usually used to sterilize the working environment. It can protect the air from germs during the production process. The pasteurizer is suitable for beverages that are not suitable for high temperature sterilization. In addition, the pasteurizer can also reduce the occurrence of bottle bursting for glass packaging. Ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization equipment is an ideal sterilization equipment for most drinks because it can quickly sterilize drinks at extremely high temperature and does not cause significant loss to nutrients in drinks to a certain extent.
Filling equipment to enhance strength
Filling is an important step in the process of beverage packaging. At present, the filling equipment on the market has been upgraded from semi-automatic to automatic and then upgraded to intelligent, which has been able to quickly transform the filling needs of different products. In addition, the filling equipment is also equipped with blowing machine, sealing machine and three-in-one equipment, greatly enhancing the function of the equipment.
Three main requirements in the filling process
- Is it possible to maintain beverage aseptic condition during filling? Maintaining the sterile state of beverages is conducive to ensuring food safety. At present, most of the filling equipments on the market can meet the requirements of hot filling below 95 ℃. At the same time, CIP self-cleaning interface is equipped to ensure that the bottle mouth is not moldy. In addition, some fully enclosed filling equipment reduces the contact between the beverage and the air through sealed filling to avoid the emergence of bacteria.
- Is the liquid height consistent in filling process? The high consistency of liquids involves not only the cost and aesthetics of the products, but also the reputation of the products in the eyes of consumers. There are many ways to measure the height of liquid.
- Is the filling speed fast enough? Filling speed of filling equipment will directly affect the cost of beverage products, so high-speed filling has become the pursuit of many equipments. We won the customers in North America while promoting the filling speed in our country.
Through the analysis of sterilization and filling equipment, it is not difficult to see the efforts of food machinery and equipment to enhance themselves. Driven by this force, we believe that instant drinks can accelerate development.
