Vacuum Curd Fusing for Uniform Cheese Curds
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Solution Overview
Problem
The manual process of fusing curd in cheese making results in unevenly sized cheese curds with air pockets and water pockets, leading to poor appearance and difficulty in packaging to precise target weights.
Innovation Solution
An apparatus and method involving a container with a vacuum system and temperature control to form a curd stack, which expresses whey and removes air, followed by cutting the stack into blocks under controlled pH conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If manual curd fusing process is used with stacking and turning, then syneresis process is promoted and whey is expelled, but the resulting curd stacks contain air pockets and water pockets causing uneven curd sizes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes air pockets and water pockets from the curd stack by passing it through a chamber maintained at subatmospheric pressure. The vacuum system draws out these harmful pockets, allowing the curd to form a more uniform, continuous matrix without interruptions from air or water pockets.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a vacuum environment (inert atmosphere) within the chamber to facilitate removal of air pockets. By maintaining subatmospheric pressure, the system eliminates the presence of air during the curd formation process, preventing air pockets from forming in the final product.
2Productivity
If manual stacking and turning of curd slabs is performed, then syneresis is promoted, but the process requires vast amounts of manual labor and long time periods
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the manual mechanical process of stacking and turning curd slabs with an automated continuous system. Curd is fed continuously through a chamber where it is compressed and formed into a continuous stack, eliminating the need for manual intervention and significantly reducing processing time.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a continuous curd processing system where curd is fed continuously through the chamber, compressed continuously, and formed into a continuous stack. This eliminates the intermittent stopping and turning required in manual processes, maintaining continuous useful action throughout the fusing process.
3Manufacturing precision
If curd stacks with air pockets and interstices are milled, then cheese curds are produced, but the curds are unevenly sized with multiple fines giving poor appearance
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary removal of air pockets and formation of a continuous curd matrix before the milling process. By eliminating air pockets and interstices in advance, the subsequent milling operation produces uniformly sized curds without generating excessive fines, as there are no pockets or weak points to create irregular fragments.
4Ease of operation
If unevenly sized cheese curds are produced, then packaging can be performed, but it becomes challenging to achieve precise target weights automatically
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses vacuum pressure (pneumatics) to compress and form the curd into a dense, uniform continuous stack before milling. This pneumatic compression ensures consistent density and uniformity throughout the curd mass, which translates to more uniform curd sizes after milling, making automatic packaging to precise target weights much easier to achieve.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Produces uniformly sized cheese curds with a continuous casein matrix, free from interstices and fines, simplifying packaging and improving quality.
Implementation Method 1
The curd stack is subjected to a vacuum, which assists in the removal of air from the curd stack
Implementation Method 2
a heating apparatus coupled to the container and configured to maintain a portion of the container or the entire container at a temperature comprised within a pre-determined temperature range
Implementation Method 3
The formation of the curd stack compresses the cheese curd in the curd stack, which causes the curd stack to express whey as the acidification of the curd takes place and as the syneresis process takes place
Data Source
Figure 1A
Figure 1B
Figure 2
AI summary
An apparatus for fusing curd and a method for fusing curd. The curd is fused in the apparatus, which is configured to form a curd stack in a container that has a temperature comprised within a temperature range that favors acidification of the cheese curd in the curd stack. The formation of the curd stack compresses the cheese curd in the curd stack, which causes the curd stack to express whey as the acidification of the curd takes place and as the syneresis process takes place. The curd stack is subjected to a vacuum, which assists in the removal of air from the curd stack. The curd stack has a continuous casein matrix, which allows for a cheese block obtained from the curd stack to be milled into cheese curds, which have substantially similar dimensions and very few fines.