Conventional industrial ice cream freezers and its thermal design: a review.

Abstract

Freezing is the most important process in any ice cream manufacturing plant. The quality of the end product mainly depends upon the various parameters chosen during freezing process. So far many batch and continuous freezers has been developed and various modifications are made in them in order to achieve more acceptable quality of frozen product. Scraped surface freezers (SSFs) are mainly used for viscous and sticky products. In scraped surface freezers, product come in direct contact with the freezing wall and scraper blades continuously scrapes off the mixture near the wall and mixes it back with product. This action leads to high heat transfer coefficient. Due to the versatility of SSFs in various operations, they are most commonly used. Also design parameters should be properly selected based on the existing models that give least errors. In this review article, various types of ice cream freezers and thermal design involved in SSHE/SSFs are explicitly discussed.