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AssigneeWenger Manufacturing, Inc.
InventorsLaVon Wenger, Marc Wenger, Galen J. Rokey, Allan C. Spellmeier
Estimating the term…
Improved extruders and methods for the extrusion cooking of comestible products such as human foods or animal feeds are provided wherein the products may be produced with very low specific mechanical energy (SME) inputs as compared with conventional processing. The methods preferably involve introduction of very high levels of steam into the extruder barrel (12) during processing, which concomitantly reduces necessary SME inputs required to achieve desired cook and expansion levels in the products. In accordance with the invention, fully-cooked pet foods can be fabricated with SME inputs of up to about 18 kWhr/T, whereas aquatic feeds can be fabricated with SME inputs of up to about 16 kWhr/T. In preferred forms, the extruder (10) includes specially configured, intermeshed extrusion screws (18, 20) and a plurality of obliquely oriented steam inlets (48, 50), and an upstream, dual-shaft preconditioner (90) is used having individual variable frequency drives (98, 100) which allow infinite variablility in the speed and rotational direction of the preconditioner shafts (94, 96).
A method of extruding a comestible material through a cooking extruder having an elongated, tubular barrel with an inlet and a restricted orifice die outlet and presenting a longitudinal axis, and an elongated, axially rotatable, helically flighted screw within said barrel, said method comprising the steps of:
A method of extruding a comestible material using a cooking extruder having an elongated, tubular barrel with an inlet and an outlet and presenting a longitudinal axis, a restrictive orifice die plate disposed across said outlet, and an elongated, axially rotatable, helically flighted screw within said barrel, said method comprising the steps of:
In a method of processing comestible materials in order to produce an extrudate, said method comprising the steps of passing a comestible material into and through a twin-screw cooking extruder having an elongated, tubular barrel with an inlet and an outlet and presenting a longitudinal axis, a restrictive orifice die plate disposed across said outlet, and a pair of elongated, axially rotatable, helically flighted screw within said barrel, the improvement which comprises creating a zone within said barrel between said inlet and said outlet having free volume not occupied by said material, and injecting steam into said barrel at said zone, wherein the step of injecting steam into said zone includes the step of injecting said steam into said zone at a level of from about 7-25% by weight of steam into said material, based upon the weight of material within said barrel taken as 100% weight, and injecting the steam at an angle oriented such that an orthogonal resolution of said angle gives a component parallel with the longitudinal axis of said barrel and extending toward said barrel outlet.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.