Coffee is booming in popularity throughout the world. Meeting this escalating demand for new convenience products, in forms such as ready-to-drink beverages, iced mixes and quick-soluble products, results in almost countless commercial opportunities.
Instant coffee is playing an ever more important role these days. The particular boost to the growth of soluble coffee is due mainly to flavoured specialities like cappuccino, espresso, vanilla, chocolate or Amaretto.
Modern convenience products of this kind are not successful purely because they are simple to prepare and come in a wide range of flavours. Consistent quality is just as important. Where enjoyment is such a focus, a process technology which is gentle on the product is of outstanding importance.
Separators and decanters from Huading Separator support the coffee industry with clarification of weak and thick extract and extract recovery in obtaining the maximum yield from their valuable coffee beans and securing a high standard of quality economically.
Another sphere of application is the production of coffee surrogate and cereal drinks.
━ Clarification of coffee extract
━ Production of instant coffee
Tea extracts are concentrated forms of tea that are derived from tea leaves using extraction methods such as physical or chemical processes. These extracts are widely used in the production of ready-to-drink beverages like canned tea and iced tea.
The extraction process influences the color, aroma, flavor, and yield of the final product. Tea extracts preserve the essential active compounds of tea, ensuring that the beverage maintains the unique characteristics of the original tea leaves.
Instant Tea
Instant tea is a powdered form of tea that dissolves quickly in water, making it convenient for immediate consumption. It is produced through a series of steps, including extraction, filtration, concentration, and drying.
The process ensures that the instant tea retains the original flavor of the tea leaves while eliminating any tea residue. Instant tea is commonly used not only for direct consumption but also as an ingredient in various food and beverage products, offering a quick and easy alternative to traditional brewing.
Instant Tea & Tea Extract Processing Steps
Whether it is pure instant tea or blended instant tea, the processing flow is generally similar: raw material pretreatment → tea extraction → tea juice purification and concentration → tea juice drying → instant tea packaging → finished product.
Raw Material Pretreatment:
The raw tea leaves used for instant tea or tea extract production are dried until the moisture content does not exceed 6%. After drying, they are sent through a crusher for coarse grinding. This increases the surface area of the tea leaves, enhancing their contact with water during extraction and accelerating the dissolution of soluble substances. The grind size is typically around 0.4mm.
Tea Extraction:
The flavor compounds in tea are distributed in different parts of the leaf tissue. Water is the most commonly used solvent for extraction. The tea-to-water ratio typically ranges from 1:9 to 1:15, with water temperature close to 100° The extraction time generally lasts for 10-15 minutes.
Purification and Filtration of Tea Extract:
The purpose of this step is to remove impurities and sediments from the tea extract. This is typically done using filters and centrifuges, which help remove fine particles and other impurities from the tea juice.
Concentration of Tea Extract:
After purification, the tea extract is still relatively diluted and needs to be concentrated to reach a final concentration of 20%-40%. Concentration not only improves drying efficiency but also aids in the creation of low-density granular products. Common concentration methods include falling-film evaporation and membrane separation. While evaporation concentration is efficient, it may cause some loss of flavor and nutrients from the extract.
Drying of Tea Extract:
The drying process removes moisture from the concentrated tea extract, reducing the moisture content to below 5%. Common drying methods include spray drying, freeze drying, and vacuum drum drying. Spray drying is the most widely used method due to its high efficiency, compact design, and low cost. Freeze drying is more effective at preserving the color and aroma of the extract, but is more expensive due to higher equipment costs.
Packaging:
Instant tea and tea extracts are sensitive to moisture and odours, so they must be packaged promptly after drying. Packaging is carried out in an environment where the temperature is below 20°C, and the relative humidity is below 60%. The packaging materials used must have excellent sealing properties to prevent moisture absorption and ensure the quality of the final product.
Centrifuges Used in Tea Extract and Instant Tea Production
Centrifuges are integral to the production of tea extracts and instant tea, facilitating efficient separation and concentration processes. Instant tea powder processing plants can be equipped with either single-disc or double-disc centrifuges. After separation, the tea solution is concentrated using an evaporator to remove water. The concentrated solution is then dried using a spray dryer to create tea powder.
The following are the applications of Huading’s centrifuges and decanter centrifuges in the tea beverage industry:
Tea Extract Production
In the production of tea extract, tea leaves are first subjected to water extraction, and the resulting solution is then concentrated.
Decanter centrifuges are used to separate solid residues from the tea extract, ensuring that the liquid remains clear and pure.
This process increases extraction efficiency while preserving the delicate compounds in tea, maintaining the desired flavor and aroma.
Instant Tea Production
Instant tea is a powdered form of tea that dissolves quickly in water, providing a convenient option for immediate consumption.
The production process involves several key steps:
Clarification: Disc separators remove fine particles from the tea extract, resulting in a clear liquid suitable for further processing.
Concentration: The clarified tea extract is typically concentrated using an evaporator to increase its solid content before drying.
Drying: The concentrated extract is then dried, usually through spray drying, to create instant tea powder. This process ensures that high-quality instant tea is produced, meeting all the required standards.
Recovery of Valuable Components
Centrifuges also play a role in maximizing the yield of desired substances from tea leaves.
By recovering beneficial compounds such as tea polyphenols, the efficiency of the production process is increased.
The separation process ensures that valuable elements are extracted and preserved, contributing to higher-quality tea products.
Consumers expect tea to be free of any residue or cloudiness when brewing. The tea must be clear and have the desired flavor. To achieve optimal tea clarity, the use of Huading separators is an effective method for purification.
Gentle Tea Leaf Processing
Excellent Quality Instant Tea
Tea Clarity
Your Partner in Instant Tea and Tea Extract Production
We understand the stringent quality requirements involved in the production of tea extracts and instant tea. Therefore, we are committed to efficiently meeting the specific needs of the tea industry with our decanter centrifuges and separators. You can experience personalised support directly from our in-house project planning team.
The increasing popularity of citrus beverages with the consumer together with the importance which food scientists attach to the citrus fruit has led to an impressive development in this market.
Huading Separator has been heavily involved in developing a large number of new processes, for modern methods of processing citrus fruits provide many possibilities for the application of clarifying and separating technology.
━ Alcohol from citrus products
━ Citrus oil dewaxing
━ Production of aromatic water
━ Production of clear lemon juice
━ Production of essential oils
━ Production of juice and concentrate
━ Production of natural cloudy juices
━ Separation of pulp
Huading Separator has taken a further step in the field of brewing beer. Whereas separators and decanters have been used for a long time in the production of beer, the latest process represents a further milestone in filtration technology: the beer separator and membrane are combined, the entire filtration process flows continuously, with maximum yield and a simple method of changing types. The environment is protected and process costs are reduced.
Anyhow, disc separators and decanter centrifuges play a key role in the manufacture of beer. In the decisive steps of the brewing process, they ensure economical operation and a high-quality of beer.
Beer can be produced on any scale from small home brews, to craft beer micro-breweries and finally large industrial scale.
However, the brewing process is ultimately very similar on each scale as below:
Brewing-process-flow
━ Beer Recovery from Tank Bottoms
━ Clarification of Beer before Kieselguhr Filtration
━ Cold Wort Separation
━ Green Beer Clarification with Addition of
━ Yeast/Tank Bottoms
━ Green Beer Separation
━ Hot Wort Separation
━ Manufacture of Non-Alcoholic Beer
━ Trub Wort Separation
━ Turbidity Adjustment with Separators
In a brewery centrifuge, which may also be called a beer separator or a decanter centrifuge, these same principles are applied to a liquid wort or beer. The liquid is laden with various types of suspended particulate, including yeast, trub, and hop residue, each with a different density.
When a centrifuge spins the liquid within a round bowl, at a given rotation speed, eventually the heavier components of the liquid, notably trub and yeast, because they experience greater centrifugal forces, will move closer to the bowl’s outer wall.
Meanwhile, the lightest components, including water and alcohol, will stay closer to the center axis of the rotation bowl. This type of centrifugal separation is aided further by the fact that the circumference of the circle traveled by the liquid closest to the center is much smaller than the one traveled by the particles along the outer wall.
This even further reinforces the separation of particles in the liquid according to their density. In terms of physics, the power of the centrifugal forces is governed by an equation called Stokes’ law, and centrifuges in a brewery are constructed to generate truly enormous rotational forces that may be several thousand times the size of the earth’s gravitational forces.
See Stokes’ law. Such disc beer separator or decanter centrifuge also allow for the draining of the clear, separated liquid from the rotation bowl, while removing the undissolved particles out of the bowl. This is the principle of a functioning centrifuge in practice.
Centrifuges in the brewery are employed in several ways. A wort centrifuge can separate hot trub from clear wort even more efficiently than a whirlpool, which is actually a type of low-tech centrifuge.
A beer centrifuge employed before packaging can reduce the beer’s turbidity by separating many or most of the yeast cells from the clear beer. This is particularly useful if the beer is to be packaged unfiltered, but the yeast does not flocculate sufficiently to the bottom of the fermenter.
It is possible to link the centrifuge to an optical sensor that measures the turbidity of the beer; properly used, this setup can be used to adjust haze or yeast cell counts in the final package.
Likewise, a beer separator can remove some of the yeast between the end of primary fermentation and the beginning of secondary fermentation or before lagering.
If the brewery uses fining agents, these, too, can be removed via centrifuge. Another favourite location for the use of centrifuges is right before an in-line filter. Because the centrifuge removes the bulk of the particulate, the filter medium can perform its function for much longer intervals before it needs to be serviced.
A completely different purpose of a centrifuge is beer reclamation. When excess or spent yeast slurry is purged out of the bottom of a fermenter, the liquid part of the slurry is of course perfectly drinkable beer. Some breweries consider it worthwhile to centrifuge the slurry and introduce the reclaimed beer back into the beer flow.
Finally, beer can be centrifuged to remove any residual cold break right before packaging. This eliminates, among other substances, some of the protein-type materials that are directly and indirectly involved in haze formation as well as beer oxidation.
