Freeze Drying

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04/02/2025 Added

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Freeze Drying by Matt Graunke. 2025 High Pressure Processing and Dehydration Workshop

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[00:00:00.000]This is our Parker II system.
[00:00:09.320]This system is capable of running 500 pounds of wet product at a time at a maximum.
[00:00:16.240]How we come up with that is based on how much we can fit in a cart.
[00:00:20.260]These are the product carts.
[00:00:27.440]In cart design, we've got 42 trays.
[00:00:30.100]Each tray is its own heater.
[00:00:32.100]Each product pan, like you see right there, will sit on these trays.
[00:00:37.000]We're going to have conductive heat from the bottom and radiant heat from the tray above
[00:00:41.200]it.
[00:00:42.200]The very top shelf just has conductive only.
[00:00:44.940]We're saying six pounds per pan, typically the top shelf you're going to do five and
[00:00:48.820]a half, or you can do six and just run it a little longer and it'll still work out.
[00:00:55.580]Product goes in there.
[00:00:57.420]It's rolled into the machine.
[00:01:08.920]If you want to peek inside here, so we use a ramp to get the carts up there.
[00:01:14.760]They're very heavy.
[00:01:15.760]You've got to be careful.
[00:01:16.760]It's a two-person job.
[00:01:17.980]When you get the cart in there, you have to plug it in so that you've got the power source
[00:01:22.580]for the heat.
[00:01:23.580]Then we've got two thermocouples per cart.
[00:01:26.340]One of those is going to cover...
[00:01:27.400]One of those is going to cover the cart temperature, which behaves based on the set point you put
[00:01:34.940]in the system.
[00:01:36.360]The other one is going to cover the product temperature.
[00:01:39.760]That's just a nice to know.
[00:01:40.920]It has no bearing on the program, but it gives you an idea of what's happening to your product
[00:01:44.920]while it's in process.
[00:01:47.400]While the product is running, that moisture's coming off in vapor form, it has to go to
[00:01:51.860]the coldest thing in the room, like we talked about, which is these cold plates in a system
[00:01:57.380]like this.
[00:01:58.380]If we've got a 500 pound of wet product, and let's just say 20% yield, we're losing 400
[00:02:04.880]pounds of moisture.
[00:02:06.500]That's all going to be on those cold plates, so it's not uncommon to have a couple inches
[00:02:11.160]of ice on the two, and then there's one in the back.
[00:02:15.780]When your process is done, you've stopped the process, you've released the vacuum, you
[00:02:21.380]take your product out, you start the defrost cycle, it's going to use the energy generated
[00:02:27.360]from chilling two of the plates to heat the other plate, and then it swaps through them.
[00:02:33.260]So it's a hot gas defrost program, and it usually takes two and a half to three hours
[00:02:39.820]to get that all to melt enough to where it falls off and it's laying on the floor, and
[00:02:45.040]then you've got to dispose of it.
[00:02:46.200]Whether it's whatever your facility needs and your local requirements are, you just
[00:02:50.920]shovel it out and dump it outside, you put it in a holding tank, some places collect
[00:02:57.340]it and extract aromas, flavors out of it if there's enough value there, other places just
[00:03:03.880]dump it outside.
[00:03:04.840]What's that?
[00:03:06.640]Yeah, oh yeah, so we did ghost peppers in our pilot unit at the warehouse, and when
[00:03:15.780]we defrosted it, the guys in the shop couldn't work, because there was a nice breeze coming
[00:03:21.620]through there, and the air was just getting peppery, so some guys are pretty uncomfortable
[00:03:27.320]that we're welding near it, and they're like, yeah, yeah, the aromatics and stuff, so when,
[00:03:35.520]like, this particular unit is set up so that we can program cart two different than cart
[00:03:42.240]one, different temperatures, different times, okay, and when we first got here, we did a
[00:03:47.720]batch of two different soups, one was a chicken noodle type vegetables, the other one was
[00:03:53.880]like a curry type thing, and the whole thing tasted like curry when it was done.
[00:03:57.300]I mean, it worked, but there was contamination across the two.
[00:04:01.200]Anything that's got a real potent flavor profile, probably going to have a contamination issue
[00:04:06.020]if you put something different in there, so keep that in mind.
[00:04:08.480]How does the moisture supplement in the cabinets close?
[00:04:11.820]Oh, it just goes right through the little holes.
[00:04:14.420]Yeah, we actually did a couple of tests where we actually put plastic covers on and just
[00:04:19.720]drilled two holes in them, and there was no difference in the amount of time it took,
[00:04:23.780]because it's just, the vacuum is exceptionally powerful, and if there's a place for it to
[00:04:27.280]escape, that's where it goes.
[00:04:28.280]Now, remind me, because I don't have my notes in front of me.
[00:04:31.980]What's the temperature, heat, you said there's heat on the bottom, radiant on the top?
[00:04:37.040]Yeah, so the standard design, we can get you up to about 180.
[00:04:40.480]Okay.
[00:04:41.480]180 Fahrenheit.
[00:04:42.480]How low can it be?
[00:04:44.480]Minus 50, I think.
[00:04:45.920]Not with the heat, though.
[00:04:47.380]Oh, the temperature, you can just shut it off, and it'll get just as cold as the
[00:04:50.660]rest of the system inside there, so.
[00:04:52.620]What's the lowest temperature you can set it to?
[00:04:56.420]Usually people are starting around...
[00:04:57.260]Around 10 degrees.
[00:04:58.260]10 degrees?
[00:04:59.260]Yeah, yeah, that's usually where it starts at.
[00:05:01.040]So like that long run that we just did that was, you know, four weeks in the chamber,
[00:05:05.740]we went from minus 10 to plus 15, and then we finished at 40.
[00:05:14.460]And the last, that 40 wasn't only for like six days at the end, so we spent a good week
[00:05:19.820]and a half at that minus 10.
[00:05:21.980]And it was sublimating.
[00:05:22.980]Is this whole lamb?
[00:05:23.980]Yeah.
[00:05:24.980]Like innards and all?
[00:05:25.980]Mm-hmm.
[00:05:27.240]Yep.
[00:05:28.240]Nope.
[00:05:29.240]Just whole animals.
[00:05:30.240]Yep.
[00:05:31.240]Throw the rabbit in and you can--
[00:05:32.240]Smaller than that.
[00:05:33.240]But yeah.
[00:05:34.240]Concept's the same.
[00:05:35.240]It just takes longer the bigger the animal.
[00:05:36.240]It shocked me when I saw it at Global Pit three years ago.
[00:05:40.160]Especially.
[00:05:41.160]Yeah.
[00:05:42.160]Baby quail .
[00:05:43.160]Oh, okay.
[00:05:44.160]Yeah.
[00:05:45.160]It's a really neat concept.
[00:05:46.160]The main thing is just they got to have a way for that moisture to escape, so you got
[00:05:49.860]to pierce them.
[00:05:50.860]Okay.
[00:05:51.860]Yeah.
[00:05:52.860]Treat it like a blueberry.
[00:05:53.860]Mm-hmm.
[00:05:54.860]Explosion in the--
[00:05:55.860]Yeah.
[00:05:56.860]God, no.
[00:05:57.220]Never let me run it again.
[00:05:58.320]You can go up to a positive 180.
[00:06:01.720]Yeah.
[00:06:02.720]What's your normal max on, say, like, pet food, high meat products?
[00:06:09.420]So--
[00:06:10.420]And I know that's a loaded question.
[00:06:11.420]Yeah.
[00:06:12.420]Give me a range.
[00:06:13.420]I mean, but--
[00:06:14.420]So we typically are going to see, like, if a group is trying to use the freeze dryer
[00:06:17.620]as part of their kill step, they're usually getting up to, like, 160 or so.
[00:06:22.200]Okay.
[00:06:23.200]Most of the pet groups are trying to keep that rod designation, so they're not
[00:06:26.100]going that high.
[00:06:27.200]How high are they going?
[00:06:28.200]I don't know what the signature is on what you can get away with.
[00:06:31.160]Yeah.
[00:06:32.160]I'll find out from the guys what they think about it, and I can get you an email later.
[00:06:36.700]But it's not uncommon.
[00:06:39.260]I guess when I'm looking at other profiles and stuff, I do see 120, 130 sometimes, depending
[00:06:45.960]on what it is.
[00:06:47.360]But for the meats, most of the stuff that I've been seeing, everybody's on that raw
[00:06:50.520]thing, so they stay nice and chilled.
[00:06:53.220]Pretty low, yeah.
[00:06:54.640]Does the 115 kill Listeria?
[00:06:57.180]- I'm not certain on that.
[00:06:59.460]Yeah, it might be around there.
[00:07:00.500]or somewhere.
[00:07:01.340]I think it's different for the different types
[00:07:02.540]that you're trying to prevent.
[00:07:03.880]- Monocytogeny is around, yeah, what's the temperature?
[00:07:07.360]- It's around 115.
[00:07:08.780]Usually, most people try to do 165 at least,
[00:07:11.400]'cause then you're like salmonella and the scary .
[00:07:14.160]- Yeah, 160's like the magic number that we see for that,
[00:07:17.440]'cause it's kind of the does everything type of a deal.
[00:07:19.720]I forget, I don't know, is it like 10 minutes or something?
[00:07:21.580]It's not very long at all.
[00:07:23.300]- I think it's less than five minutes.
[00:07:26.620]- Yeah, it's not long at all.
[00:07:27.460]- To reach internal temperature.
[00:07:28.620]- No, the key thing though,
[00:07:29.840]okay, so groups that are doing that,
[00:07:32.280]there is an exceptional amount of research
[00:07:34.120]that goes into figuring that out.
[00:07:35.740]Because if they wait too long to do that,
[00:07:37.380]there's not enough moisture left for it to be effective.
[00:07:40.060]And then at that point, everything's just in stasis
[00:07:42.000]and you're not killing it and it's gonna come back.
[00:07:44.100]So what they have to do is they have to take it all the way,
[00:07:47.440]then work it backwards and then start running it
[00:07:51.520]shorter times, testing it and figuring it out.
[00:07:54.860]What's that?
[00:07:55.700]- You take it up to one second
[00:07:57.560]and then you have to rephrase the product.
[00:07:59.180]- Well at that point, most of the moisture's out of it
[00:08:02.500]by the time you're trying to figure that out.
[00:08:04.380]So what you can do is you just draw the vacuum again
[00:08:07.080]and temperature just drops.
[00:08:09.400]Yeah, so there's some things that we've done like,
[00:08:11.380]well when we test these machines, we fill them with water.
[00:08:14.600]And that's how we freeze the water to make it into ice
[00:08:16.780]so we can sublimate it, is we just draw a vacuum.
[00:08:18.960]And it's really neat if you've never seen it
[00:08:20.440]'cause it's liquid water and it's colder than hell in there
[00:08:23.400]and all of a sudden it boils and then it just turns into ice.
[00:08:26.640]Yeah, it's the craziest thing I've ever seen.
[00:08:28.520]So, that's the inside of the system.
[00:08:31.700]When the run is done, you've taken your product out,
[00:08:34.460]you've removed your thermocouples,
[00:08:35.800]you've started your defrost,
[00:08:37.700]and then you're working with the components in the cart,
[00:08:40.520]taking all your products out
[00:08:41.840]and going to whatever your next steps are.
[00:08:44.160]When you're ready to use the carts again,
[00:08:49.060]depending on what your guidelines are,
[00:08:50.420]you're gonna have processes of, okay, make sure,
[00:08:52.240]is it clean, is it sanitized, whatever you have to do.
[00:08:55.100]So what you typically wanna avoid
[00:08:56.680]is you don't wanna use anything high pressure
[00:08:58.400]and extra wet because there's electrical components
[00:09:01.240]that we need to protect.
[00:09:02.760]So it's typically kind of a wipe down,
[00:09:04.800]maybe some air, and then a sanitize.
[00:09:07.260]Now in theory, this isn't gonna get that dirty
[00:09:10.240]unless something has gone terribly wrong
[00:09:12.420]and your product is all over the place.
[00:09:15.160]So these guys labeled all their trays
[00:09:18.540]so that they can do their validations and everything.
[00:09:20.900]That comes in handy if you're trying
[00:09:22.080]to keep track of certain things.
[00:09:23.680]But the control systems itself,
[00:09:28.280]it's very intuitive and it's very comprehensive.
[00:09:32.940]Our main screen tells us almost everything
[00:09:35.040]we need to know about operations.
[00:09:36.820]We're monitoring the pressures inside,
[00:09:39.080]the temperature of the cold plates,
[00:09:41.760]the set points of the carts,
[00:09:43.320]the actual temperature of the carts.
[00:09:45.880]We're watching all of that.
[00:09:47.620]We can see what the product temperatures are here.
[00:09:50.400]Like I said, that doesn't really tell us anything
[00:09:52.660]about the PLC or the program.
[00:09:55.660]That just tells us what's happening with our product.
[00:09:58.160]So if you see it taking off and you have a concern,
[00:10:01.780]you can slow down, you can stop it, you can check it,
[00:10:04.180]whatever you got to do.
[00:10:05.920]Starting and stopping is very easy.
[00:10:09.760]What we're looking at-- this is all of the KPIs
[00:10:15.560]from the unit that's on the roof on the refrigeration side.
[00:10:18.840]So you can have an idea how that system is performing.
[00:10:22.160]And you can keep an eye and watch for trends that, hey,
[00:10:25.140]something's not right.
[00:10:26.080]There's an exceptional load here, but we're not
[00:10:28.040]getting any performance.
[00:10:29.660]The suction superheat is down low.
[00:10:31.740]You've got discharge temperatures going off.
[00:10:33.660]Whatever.
[00:10:34.580]You know where it's supposed to be,
[00:10:36.480]and you watch for deviations from that.
[00:10:38.580]So you try and catch it before it becomes a problem.
[00:10:42.800]The system trends-- what this is going to show
[00:10:46.740]is all of those KPIs we just talked about in a real time
[00:10:50.080]graph form.
[00:10:51.520]So you can watch it while it's happening,
[00:10:53.320]adjust it in real time if you're dialing something in,
[00:10:57.100]if you're looking at it.
[00:10:57.920]After the fact, you can go back, analyze what happened.
[00:11:01.180]That's where you find your efficiencies.
[00:11:02.800]Oh, I stuck at 50 degrees for 15 hours.
[00:11:05.860]It quit releasing moisture at six hours.
[00:11:10.620]I could have easily just bumped it another 15
[00:11:12.740]and saved myself four hours of runtime.
[00:11:15.600]It's very typical that you're getting a system like this.
[00:11:18.400]You probably are running it three to five times
[00:11:20.800]before you're dialed in.
[00:11:23.180]You're going to get dry product every time,
[00:11:25.180]but it's going to take a couple of runs to feel it out.
[00:11:27.800]And figure it out.
[00:11:29.420]Once you've got it figured out, then you save that recipe
[00:11:33.900]in there, and you can recall it later.
[00:11:37.920]Everything in here is password protected on different levels.
[00:11:41.640]So if you have a food science or a formulator,
[00:11:44.640]they'll have access to this of changing, and saving,
[00:11:47.800]and recalling, and things like that.
[00:11:50.240]But your operator level can just hit Start and Stop.
[00:11:53.560]They can see all the things that would alert them
[00:11:55.720]if there's an issue, the alarm system
[00:11:57.680]and everything.
[00:11:58.300]But there's no danger of them changing a recipe
[00:12:01.860]and costing you 500 pounds of product, or 2,500,
[00:12:04.980]or what have you.
[00:12:06.200]So we put that all in place.
[00:12:09.060]The system, when hooked up to the ethernet,
[00:12:12.920]is completely accessible remotely.
[00:12:14.960]You can control it in real time and view it in real time.
[00:12:18.080]It's basically a mirror of the HMI.
[00:12:21.420]In addition to that, we're rolling out
[00:12:23.660]a cloud-based system that is strictly for monitoring only.
[00:12:27.560]A system like this with just a single unit,
[00:12:31.160]it helps to not have to come in here and look at it
[00:12:34.600]and log in and do all the things wherever you're gonna be.
[00:12:37.440]You just go to this website that's set up for your facility
[00:12:41.380]and it tells you everything you need to know.
[00:12:42.940]What program is running?
[00:12:44.640]In the last month, how often was it running
[00:12:46.920]versus not running?
[00:12:47.920]So you can watch for deviations and efficiencies.
[00:12:50.820]How come I've got so much downtime?
[00:12:52.360]Talk to your operations team, find out what's going on.
[00:12:55.140]The facilities that are running
[00:12:57.440]multiple units, they've got a screen
[00:13:00.200]that just shows all 15 of their systems.
[00:13:02.840]And supervisory level and managerial level
[00:13:05.940]just looks at it, and they see green, and yeah, life is good.
[00:13:09.020]How come there's yellow and red?
[00:13:10.760]So it really helps keep the efficiencies going.
[00:13:15.320]The alarm system, very similar.
[00:13:18.240]It alerts you.
[00:13:18.880]There's different levels of alarms.
[00:13:20.820]We've got the nice to know, normal operation, nice to know,
[00:13:25.320]and if it's 2:00 in the morning, you better wake up.
[00:13:27.320]So there's four different levels,
[00:13:29.540]and we set them up accordingly.
[00:13:31.360]It's all set up through SMS messaging.
[00:13:33.640]So whoever you're on call or your supervisor is,
[00:13:37.120]you don't have to be right in front of it all the time.
[00:13:39.340]If something goes wrong, they're going to get a notification
[00:13:41.480]so that you can alert somebody to help you take care of it.
[00:13:44.440]Yeah. It's all about the machines running nonstop.
[00:13:47.440]That's what it comes down to.
[00:13:48.480]We want them running 24/7 for you.
[00:13:50.940]As fast as you can load them, fire them back up.
[00:13:54.940]Questions?
[00:13:57.200]Thank you.

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Freeze Drying

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