During the high-shear, dry extrusion process, a lot of events occur at the same time.\u00a0 The intense shear and pressure mechanically process the product to enhance several characteristics.\u00a0 The extruder has many purposes, one of which being dehydration.\u00a0 It is because of this phenomenon that antinutritional factors are deactivated, like in the case of soy processing.\u00a0 A question to ask, however, is why does this occur?<\/p>\n
The high-shear dry extruder is a unique machine.\u00a0 Thermal processing occurs by friction alone.\u00a0 Within the extruder, the product is put under extreme conditions, but only for a very short amount of time.\u00a0 The short duration keeps nutrient availability high.\u00a0 Within this retention time, the product not only undergoes intense shearing, but intense pressures as well.\u00a0 Using pressure transducers, we\u2019ve been able to measure this pressure to be several times greater than atmospheric pressure.\u00a0 This compression increases as the product travels through the barrel, eventually reaching the discharge end and exiting the nose cone.\u00a0 It is at this interface where physics takes over and a truly unique process happens.<\/p>\n
It is known that water will boil at 100 degree Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) under standard atmospheric conditions (i.e. the regular air pressure you experience daily).\u00a0 When water is placed under pressure, the temperature at which water boils increases.\u00a0 The inverse is also true.\u00a0 This explains why water will boil at a lower temperature at higher elevations since atmospheric pressure is less.\u00a0 As mentioned, the environment inside the extruder barrel is under intense pressure.\u00a0 There is a barrier where extruded product will go from the intense pressure into the regular atmosphere and it\u2019s at nose cone.\u00a0 The nose cone discharges into atmospheric conditions, which is a massive pressure drop.\u00a0 Much like what scuba divers experience when diving to extreme depths (and the reason they need to slowly swim back to the surface to avoid decompression sickness), the extruded product experiences a similar phenomenon at a cellular level.\u00a0 This massive pressure drop causes cell structures to explode, making certain aspects more bioavailable.\u00a0 At the same time, the water which was under extreme pressure releases from the product, essentially \u201cboiling\u201d off, which is what you see in the form of steam.<\/p>\n
The high-shear, dry extruder is a unique piece of equipment.\u00a0 Dehydration is just one of the many benefits of processing through this type of extruder.\u00a0 Harnessing this and other unique characteristics will enhance products you wish to process.<\/p>\n
Please reach out to our engineering team if you have any questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the high-shear, dry extrusion process, a lot of events occur at the same time.\u00a0 The intense shear and pressure mechanically process the product to enhance several characteristics.\u00a0 The extruder has many purposes, one of which being dehydration.\u00a0 It is because of this phenomenon that antinutritional factors are deactivated, like in the case of soy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":13439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7176],"tags":[1587,8119],"class_list":["post-13438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineeringandmaintenance","tag-extrusion","tag-thermal-processing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n