Method and apparatus for the production of high viscosity paste products with added components

Abstract

Combined extrusion/sonolation apparatus (10) which is designed to continuously and efficiently incorporate components (e.g., liquid lipids or fats or meltable solids) into heterogeneous materials in order to form stable products. The apparatus (10) includes an extruder (12) having a barrel (27) and restricted orifice outlet (38); a sonolation device (14) is directly coupled to the outlet (38). Preferably a monitoring unit (50) is located downstream of the sonolation device (14) and is connected via a controller (18) with the extruder (12) and device (14) so as to control the operation of the latter. In use, starting materials are fed into the extruder (12) and are initially mixed, whereupon a component is injected through a barrel-mounted injector pipe (41). The composite extrudate is treated within device (14) by subjecting it to acoustic vibrations.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.