Industrial equipment for the treatment of produce
AssigneeApeel Technology, Inc.
InventorsCody Hegel, Stephen William Kaun, Claire Patterson, Louis Perez, Matthew Taylor Aronson, Matthew Dominick Gaudioso
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An application system for forming protective coatings over perishable items, including: a bed including a plurality of rollers, wherein each of the rollers is configured to rotate at a predetermined rotational rate, thereby causing the perishable items on the bed to rotate; one or more sprayers over a first portion of the bed; one or more blowers over a second portion of the bed; a mixing system configured to prepare a mixture including a coating agent in a solvent; and a liquid delivery system connected inline between the mixing system and the one or more sprayers.
Claims19
An application system for forming protective coatings over perishable items, comprising:
- a bed comprising:
- a plurality of rollers, wherein each of the rollers is configured to rotate at a predetermined rotational rate, thereby causing the perishable items on the bed to rotate;
- one or more sprayers over a first portion of the bed;
- one or more sets of blowers over a second portion of the bed, wherein the bed comprises:
- a rotation inducing device in contact with the first portion of the bed, and the contact between the rotation inducing device and the rollers of the first portion of the bed causes rotation at the predetermined rotational rate, and
- a second rotation inducing device in contact with the second portion of the bed, and the contact between the second rotation inducing device and the rollers of the second portion of the bed causes rotation at a second predetermined rotational rate;
- a mixer system configured to prepare a mixture comprising coating agent particles in a solvent;
- and
- a liquid sprayer delivery system connected inline between the mixer system and the one or more sprayers, wherein the liquid sprayer delivery system is configured such that a flowrate of the mixture is controlled by a pump in the liquid sprayer delivery system based on a rotation rate of the rollers and/or on a translational rate of perishable items on the first portion of the bed and the mixture is applied to the perishable items via the one or more sprayers while the perishable items are rotating and are over the first portion of the bed.
A method of forming a protective coating over a plurality of perishable items, comprising:
- (i) placing the perishable items on a bed of an application system, wherein the application system comprises:
- the bed, wherein the bed comprises a plurality of rollers, wherein each of the rollers is configured to rotate at a predetermined rotational rate, thereby causing the perishable items on the bed to rotate;
- one or more sprayers over a first portion of the bed;
- one or more sets of blowers over a second portion of the bed, wherein the bed comprises:
- a rotation inducing device in contact with the first portion of the bed, and the contact between the rotation inducing device and the rollers of the first portion of the bed causes rotation at the predetermined rotational rate, and
- a second rotation inducing device in contact with the second portion of the bed, and the contact between the second rotation inducing device and the rollers of the second portion of the bed causes rotation at a second predetermined rotational rate;
- a mixer system configured to prepare a homogenous mixture comprising a coating agent in a solvent;
- and
- a liquid sprayer delivery system connected inline between the mixing system and the one or more sprayers, wherein the liquid sprayer delivery system is configured such that a flowrate of the homogenous mixture is controlled by a pump in the liquid sprayer delivery system based on a translational rate of the bed;
- (ii) while the perishable items are rotating and are over the first portion of the bed, causing the homogenous mixture to be applied to the perishable items via the one or more sprayers;
- and
- (iii) while the perishable items are rotating and are over the second portion of the bed, allowing the one or more sets of blowers to at least partially remove the solvent from surfaces of the perishable items, thereby causing the protective coating to be formed over the perishable items.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.