New Processing Technology for Water as an Ingredient

There are several things in life that we take for granted. Water is very often one of them. Each of us uses this vital liquid, the most common substance on earth, everyday. And we rarely think twice about it. Governments and international legislative bodies worldwide are redefining what is “safe to drink.” The United States has led the way by passing into law an amended Safe Drinking Water Act. The European community is considering these standards and the World Health Organization (WHO) provides the impetus for issuing a minimum common standard for the European countries. American consumers are becoming more aware of water quality and consistency. The popularity and increased demand for bottled water continues to grow as people desire better quality and consistency, and are willing to pay for the product. This paper will address the issues of water safety and consistency for a citrus processing plant using water as an ingredient, in food contact, or is contemplating off-season bottled water production. Paper published with permission.

New Systems in Plant Sanitation

Clean-In-Place (CIP) of beverage, dairy and food processes is achieved by pre-rinsing, circulation of detergents, post rinsing, and sanitizing of process equipment designed for such automated cleaning. As processing plants have expanded production capacities, the size of the equipment has increased accordingly, creating a corresponding increase in the water volumes and sanitation compounds required to achieve proper cleaning and sanitation. The purpose of this paper is to identify the environmental factors impacted by the CIP process, further to offer areas of scrutiny that the processing facility staff may evaluate for improvement potential. Paper published with permission.

Energy Savings and Opportunities in the Citrus Industry

The following opportunities have significant potential to reduce the energy needs of a citrus plant. Each opportunity is identified with specific recommendations. The recent increases in fuel cost have renewed the interest and necessity to review the energy saving opportunities. Measures that were not economical a couple of years ago may now have respectable paybacks. The opportunities are divided into the following topics: • Boiler • Feed Mill • Refrigeration • Evaporation • Rates Paper published with permission.

Bin Automation and Management

Existing fruit receiving and processing operations rely on both automated and manual data collection systems to generate and store fruit information. This information can be used to select fruit to use for a particular juice product or to optimize extraction systems. At the present time, the selection of fruit is mainly a manual process due to disconnected, dissimilar data systems and missing information. This paper describes the development of an integrated bin management system. This system uses existing customer data collection systems with new machinery and instrumentation to improve the accuracy of fruit selection and blending to optimize the extraction process. The following areas will be examined: • A review of a conventional, manual bin system • The need for an integrated data collection and selection system • An overview of the intelligent bin system • How the intelligent bin system collects and manages data • An overview of the bin selection system • Some future developments Paper published with permission.