| Abstract: | Economic and process engineering advantages of extrusion cooking in comparison with conventional processes in the food industry . Extrusion cooking is introduced as a modern high-temperature short-time process. Possible process steps in extruder machine systems, such as continuous conveying, mixing, homogenizing and reactions, mechanical and thermal energy dissipation for plasticizing and modifying biopolymers, are explained. This process creates new products with completely new textures, for example in the snack and breakfast cereal sector, while on the other hand the extrusion process competes with long-standing conventional processes. The latter work slowly with low pressures, low temperatures and energy dissipation with high water contents in large batch-operated machines. The quality of extruder-cooked products depends on the extrusion system. The self-cleaning corotating twin-screw extruder with its narrow residence time spectrum is the optimum system. However, the counter-rotating intermeshing machine has certain advantages for products of low viscosity. The cooking time at high temperature is a matter of seconds, which serves to maintain the properties of the ingredients and active substances, while ensuring fast destruction of microorganisms. The end-products have a long shelf-life on account of their low process moisture content. Continuous extrusion cooking has economic advantages mainly because it replaces many batch processes and because extrusion is carried out entirely or almost entirely with the final moisture content, thus avoiding the necessity to evaporate huge quantities of water. |
