Background

Thickeners and stabilizers are common food additives that provide improved body, texture and mouth feel to products such as dressings, sauces, soups, beverages and desserts. Other functionalities include providing adhesion for spices onto snackfoods such as potato chips (replacing oil), improve freeze-thaw stability of frozen foods, improve crumb structure in baked goods, retain moisture in foods to maintain freshness, improve spreadability of low fat spreads and improve adhesion of bread coatings to food.

Traditionally, thickener incorporation was achieved by creating a vortex with an agitator and slowly sifting the powder into the upper wall of the vortex. If "fish-eyes" formed, the process would take much longer as only additional mixing or filtering would eliminate the “fish-eyes”.

Typical problems include:

1.	Incorporation of unwanted air from the vortex.
2.	Increased processing time due to the sifting procedure and lumps and fish-eyes still form as sifting rate is too subjective.
3.	If powders are dumped in, lumps and fish eyes form readily as well as dusting and rafting problems.
4.	Filtering of lumps equal wasted raw material, lower yields.
5.	Powder build-up on tank walls and mixer shaft.

To overcome the “fish-eye” problem, many processors use smaller, separate tanks to pre-disperse their thickeners before adding them to the main mix tank. Often times, Glycol is used in the pre-dispersion. The problems that result from this method include the need for an extra processing step, extra cleaning, the added expense of the Glycol, and longer batch times. Sometimes, in-tank high shear mixers are used to assist in breaking down lumps or "fish-eyes". The problem with this process is that most high shear mixers have poor pumping capabilities and do not guarantee that every gum particle passes through the tip of the impeller or high shear zone. It also does not guarantee that each particle is dispersed and wetted. For higher viscosity mixtures, lumps may still be present at the end of the high shear mixing cycle, requiring the need for an in-line emulsifier to break down the lumps.

Quadro's Approach

Quadro Ytron equipment capitalizes on the difference between Dispersion, Mixing and Hydration.

•	Dispersion describes gum particle separation upon water contact
•	Mixing describes the blending of dispersed particles in the tank for a homogeneous mix.
•	Hydration describes complete water association on a molecular level.

Lumps are formed when hydration occurs faster than particle separation or dispersion.

Quadro's Ytron ZC Disperser separates (or disperses) gum particles effectively as they enter the water/liquid phase, creating a lump-free, "fish-eye" free, solution almost instantaneously. This step can be incorporated as part of the tank fill cycle. The Ytron ZC Disperser discharges the completely dispersed solution into the tank for blending with other ingredients. The in-tank mixer no longer needs to be an expensive high shear mixer. When all the dry gum powder has been incorporated, remaining water is flushed through the 3-A approved CIP able ZC Disperser reducing the requirement to clean another tank or piece of equipment. Batch time is significantly reduced (typically by more than 90%) due to the lower mixing and cleaning times required. Raw material usage is decreased due to the increase in process efficiency and elimination of filtered waste material.