55-Gallon drums are used to store a huge variety of products and ingredients in freezers before thawing for further processing. This can include everything from juice and puree through to beef and chicken stock.
However, thawing drums is a notoriously slow process, which can take weeks at a time, causing processors to not just give over huge areas of floorspace to slowly thawing liquids, but also to manage the logistics of having drums at states of different readiness.
It is here that the JBT Chopper/Blender can make an enormous – and immediate – difference. Instead of having to wait weeks, the Chopper/Blender can turn frozen concentrates or pulp into a pumpable condition, ready to be processed in as little as two minutes.
As JBT Product Line Manager, Michael Mas, explains, many companies face having to manage hundreds of drums of frozen product each day and must stage drums inside and outside facilities to temper them to a stage where the contents can be processed.
“Thawing can take anywhere from seven days to up to two weeks, which means customers have to lose all their floorspace to stage all these drums – and there’s a lot of logistics behind this too,” says Mas.
There is another problem with conventional thawing. During the process, liquids might become semi-melted around exterior-facing areas, while remaining frozen solid in the middle of the drum. The danger here is if the contents reach 40F, microbial contamination can occur, leading to unusable liquids and – even worse – potential food poisoning incidents if the contamination goes undetected.
The dangers of this kind of contamination and the time lost to thawing are easily avoided by using the Chopper/Blender; a solution which is effectively revolutionizing the task of processing 55-Gallon drums.
“The time saved and the freeing up of space is a huge advantage offered by the Chopper/Blender,” says Mas. “It can take the contents of a drum – once it has been slacked enough to remove the frozen contents – and turn it into a pumpable liquid in a matter of minutes.”
The Chopper/Blender achieves this by shaving the frozen liquid layer-by-layer down until it becomes fluid enough to move to the next stage of processing – and all in a matter of minutes.
Adding to the advantages of the Chopper/Blender is the fact that during a lengthy conventional thawing process, sugars can concentrate in certain areas of the drum, creating a liquid that only partially retains its original flavor. Rapid processing using the Chopper/Blender creates a homogenous liquid with a balanced sugar content, guaranteeing a better end product.