Perfect texture, great taste!
What is drum drying food?
Every morning many of us enjoy a bowl of cereal with milk for breakfast. Later in the day, potato crisps may come in handy. But despite consuming such snacks daily, only few of us can name the process by which they were made.
The practice of drying starchy root vegetables is widely used around the world, and likely dates to before the beginning of an agriculture. After harvesting, the next step is the dehydration or drying process. To get the right texture of the food, the starch powder needs to be perfectly consistent. Different techniques have been used for this purpose, but drum drying is now preferred because of its simplicity and convenience.
Drum drying is a method used for drying out liquids from pureed raw ingredients using rotating drums. Solids are then scraped off by a scraper blade. These scraper blades are sometimes called either Drum Dryer Doctor Knife or Roll Drying or Rotary Dryer Scraper Blade or Knife. However, their main function is still the same. The drum dryer is very flexible in nature. Its operation depends on the pressure of steam within the drum, the speed of drum rotation, the width of the applicator and the ratio of drum speed rotations. Drum dryers find application largely in the food industry: cereals, baby food, milk powder, tomato puree, starch and many more.
Food industry requirements for Drum Dryer Scraper Blades
To achieve the required texture of the final food it is important to use high quality drum dryer scraping blades. First, the blade must be very straight to provide uniform consistency of the dry food. Also, a crooked blade won’t contact the drum surface uniformly, and as a result leaving the product on the drum and thus eventually damaging the blade.
Secondly, the drum dryer scraper blade must have a hard and tough edge that must not wear too quickly. Budget and substandard scraper blades might chip during the scraping process and leave metal fragments in the food, what is completely unacceptable for safety reasons.
Optimized Drum Dryer Scraper Blades from Fernite
On our ISO certified factory, we manufacture drum dryer blades that are of exceptionally high quality. All Fernite’s drum dryer blades are always perfectly straight, providing an even pressure over the total length of the drum and allowing easy and quick mounting.
Additionally, we can manufacture drum dryer blades up to 6m in length for the operators of larger drums. At Fernite we can also put any custom bevel on our long drum dryer blades, as well as on the regular length blades. Using long blades on the large drum dryers reduces blade mounting times by 2-3 times compared with shorter blades. Furthermore, using long blades on large drums requires fewer mounting points across the drum, hence increasing production area on the drum.
On the top of this, we can manufacture drum dryer blades with any custom width. Having this option available means our customers always stay in control of the volume they have in production.
To ensure the best performance from each knife, we use only the highest quality steels available, and manufacture drum dryer blades using the very latest precision grinding technology.
We are glad to support you in determining the right blade for your application. Please contact our scraper blades department for technical advice or a quote, at Neil.Hutchinson@fernite.co.uk or phone us +44 (0) 114 244 0527 ext. 19.
