Sanitary overhaul enhances cryogenic freezer: Linde

Linde North America said its new freezing equipment, which is being debuted at the International Poultry Exposition in Atlanta this week, was developed with input from a global processor who wanted to improve its product conformity.

Mark DiMaggio, head of food and beverage markets for Linde NA, told FoodProductionDaily.com that the company was able to help the processor achieve the goal of product standardization with its existing cryogenic impingement freezer, but the processor asked Linde to improve that freezer’s design to make it easier to clean and to eliminate harbourage points.

Meeting standards ​

He said that, as a result, the development of the new freezer was informed by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and American Meat Institute (AMI) sanitary design principles:​

“Linde took our previously patented, unique cryogenic impingement freezing technology and added critical hygienic attributes to make it extremely easy to clean and to mitigate against potential microbial harbourage.​

“We removed dozens of screw threads on the freezer to eliminate harbourage points and sloped all surfaces to eliminate pooling and facilitate draining.” ​

Moisture retention ​

The main value of cryogenic freezing is for further processed, value-added food products such as marinated raw, par fried or fully cooked product. It is especially valuable for marinated product, such as a boneless, skinless chicken breast, which has potential to lose weight and quality through dehydration caused by mechanical freezing.

According to DiMaggio, cryogenic freezing maximizes a processor’s yield through moisture and flavour retention that results in increased tenderness.

He said the new freezer is able to achieve low dehydration rates through its patented impingement action: “The impingement action breaks down the thermal boundary around the food product to achieve up to five times less dehydration compared with a cryogenic tunnel freezer and up to ten times less dehydration than mechanical freezing.” ​

Efficiency ​

He argues that the cryogenic impingement freezer is the most efficient freezer on the market today in terms of liquid nitrogen utilization, extracting more usable British Thermal Units (BTUs) from a pound of liquid nitrogen than any other freezer available:

“The freezer’s high efficiency allows customers switching from conventional cryogenic freezing to reduce their overall nitrogen consumption between ten and 30 per cent."​

He added that the company’s food specialists will be on hand at the Atlanta show to discuss ways processors can improve all aspects of their operations in the current tough business environment.

DiMaggio said that Linde is currently evaluating the European market to determine if there is a broad need there for this new technology.