Circular equipment with automatic unmolding for popsicle production and method for popsicle production

Method for popsicle production in which a plurality of molds are arranged radially in a rotary mold holder supported by rollers in a toroidal channel-shaped freezing tank and which displacement is made intermittently by a stepper motor, said molds being immersed in a freezing fluid within the said tank, wherein said method comprises:

• (i) pouring, using distributors, ingredients into the molds;
• ii) freezing said ingredients by contacting the molds with agitated freezing fluid, where the level of said fluid is kept constant by means of a trough-shaped spillway, whose threshold is associated with an inner wall of said toroidal channel, said agitation being provided by blasting said fluid through angled holes provided in a tubular distributor placed below said molds;
• iii) unmolding the popsicles in a unmolding device, wherein the unmolding step comprises the following steps:
• —positioning, by means of the stepper motor, the mold over an unmolding station;
• —driving a piston to raise a housing, initially at a bottom of the tank, to an upper position, accommodating the mold therein with frozen popsicles;
• —draining the freezing fluid contained in the housing through the tube and valve, forwarding said fluid to a cold tank;
• —pumping the freezing fluid from the cold tank to the spillway;
• —driving a pump connected to a heated tank by sending heated fluid through the tube to a perforated horizontal pipe which releases jets of said heated fluid against mold cups;
• —draining the heated fluid through the pipe and valve into the heated tank;
• —extract the popsicles by manually removing an extractor to which popsicle sticks are attached;
• —return the housing to the bottom of the freezing tank and turn the rotary mold holder in one step.