Aroma recovery processes are used widely in food processing. The main reason to apply such a technology, is to preserve aroma for the final product, while other operations are carried out in processing. The most important example of this is evaporation. During an evaporation process, water is taken out from the main stream product by heating the product to boiling point. When water changes from a liquid state to a gas state, it will also take along any aromas that have lower boiling points. As such, when an aromatic product is evaporated, most of the good aromas, which have low boiling points, are taken out of the process. In order to avoid that, aroma is recovered before the evaporation stage and stored for further processing.
In most of the processes the aroma is added back to the concentrated product stream in order to make the concentrate taste and smell like the original product.
A good aroma recovery system fulfils two criteria:
- Effective and simple separation of aromas from the main stream product.
- Valorisation of aromas by separating the aroma in usable portions.
For the separation of aromas several technologies exist. TEC Square believes in simplicity and rugged design. We prefer a stripping column application for this purpose as it is very versatile. We use disk and donut design as this design has multiple advantages.
- The disk-and-donut stripping column is fully drainable, no liquid is accumulated in trays with bubble caps.
- The stripping column does not have moving parts. Maintenance is simple and straight forward.
- A disk and donut stripping column requires a relative low investment compared to other high-end systems
- A TEC Square designed column can be supplied with a fully flooded execution in case of CIP.
For the valorisation of aromas TEC Square has developed several techniques that are simple and effective. Depending on customer requirement we separate aromas into several accurate portions. The most important part of an effective operation is that the process is repeatable over time. But equally important is flexibility in operation. Not every process requires the same process parameters. Our technology allows to separate very volatile aromas as well.
Lastly, a good aroma recovery system provides a quality final concentrated product. As aroma recovery will dilute the final product again, it is important that the concentration method used is in line with this operation. Our evaporation techniques allow for much higher concentrations as standard concentration technologies. When aroma is added back to the concentrate an ideal concentration will exist for either shipment or drying.
If you would like to know more about our technologies, please visit our website.