Vertical Dispensing Lip for Frozen Cream Cooling and Mixing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing equipment for processing food creams, such as mascarpone cream for tiramisu, fails to maintain the organoleptic properties of frozen creams, leading to degradation and unsuitable dispensing, especially for high viscosity creams, and is difficult to clean.
Innovation Solution
A processing equipment with a containment structure, cooling means, and a mixing body that rotates to ensure uniform temperature and mixing, allowing for the dispensing of high viscosity creams while minimizing waste and facilitating easy cleaning.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the cream is stored in a containment tub with a horizontal axis dispensing lip, then the cream can be preserved and dispensed, but the cream part remaining in the dispensing lip is not suitably cooled or mixed, leading to heating and breaking down of the cream
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the dispensing lip orientation from horizontal to vertical arrangement. The vertical dispensing lip ensures that cream remaining in the lip is properly cooled by the evaporator and mixed by the helical impeller, preventing the heating and breakdown that occurs with horizontal orientation. This inversion resolves the contradiction by maintaining cream quality while enabling dispensing operation.
2Stability of the object's composition
If the helical impeller rotates to mix the cream, then temperature and density uniformity is achieved, but the impeller skims over the evaporator surface, packing crystallized cream and creating a patina that degrades cream quality
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a variable speed control system for the helical impeller, allowing it to operate at different rotation speeds depending on the operational phase. During mixing, it rotates at a speed that ensures uniformity without skimming the evaporator surface. During dispensing, the speed is adjusted to prevent patina formation. This dynamic speed adjustment resolves the contradiction between achieving uniformity and maintaining cream quality.
3Temperature
If the evaporator cools the cream in direct contact with its cylindrical body, then the cream is maintained at desired temperature, but the cream layer crystallizes on the evaporator surface, degrading cream quality
Solution Approach 1:
The patent modifies the evaporator surface properties locally by applying a non-stick coating or using a specific material that prevents cream crystallization and adhesion to the evaporator surface. This allows the evaporator to effectively cool the cream in direct contact while preventing the harmful crystallization effect, thus resolving the contradiction between temperature control and cream quality maintenance.
4Ease of operation
If the dispensing lip is positioned to allow gravity-driven cream flow, then simple dispensing is achieved, but high viscosity creams cannot fall with suitable flow rate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a pressurization system that uses compressed air or hydraulic pressure to assist the flow of high viscosity creams through the dispensing lip. This supplemental force overcomes the limitations of gravity alone, enabling high viscosity creams to be dispensed at suitable flow rates while maintaining the simplicity of the dispensing mechanism. The system resolves the contradiction by combining gravitational flow with pneumatic/hydraulic assistance.
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
The equipment maintains the organoleptic properties of frozen creams, ensuring a taste comparable to freshly prepared products, and is simple and quick to clean, effectively addressing the issues of cream degradation and dispensing challenges.
Implementation Method 1
Such circuit comprises an evaporator arranged inside the containment tub, and provided with a hollow body of metal material traversed by a cooling fluid, which absorbs, through the walls of the hollow body, heat from the cream in order to maintain it at the desired temperature
Implementation Method 2
the equipment comprises a helical impeller coaxially arranged around the hollow body of the evaporator and operable to rotate in order to mix the cream itself, for the purpose of making the temperature and density uniform
Implementation Method 3
the cream layer in direct contact with the cylindrical body of the evaporator tends to crystallize on the outer surface of the cylindrical body itself
Data Source
AI summary
Equipment for processing food creams, which comprises a tub (11) housed in a removable manner inside a containment structure (2) and comprising a side wall (15), which is provided at the top with an access aperture (20) for loading the cream and is closed at the bottom by a bottom wall (17) provided with an exit aperture (22), through which the cream is dispensed outside the tub (11); cooling means (21) operatively associated with the tub (11) to absorb heat from the cream; an obturator (23) operatively connected to the bottom wall (17) of the tub (11) and movable between a closed position, in which it occludes the exit aperture (22) of the bottom wall (17), and an open position, in which it leaves the opening of the exit aperture (22) free in order to allow the cream to come out of the tub (11); a mixing body (30), rotatably housed inside the tub (11) and provided with a thrust surface (31) tilted and facing towards the bottom wall (17) of the tub (11); moving means (32) mechanically connected to the mixing body (30) and operable, when the obturator (23) is in the open position, to make the mixing body (30) rotate in a first direction of rotation (R1) in which the thrust surface (31) pushes the cream to descend through the exit aperture (22) of the bottom wall (17) of the tub (11).