How to Clean and Disinfect the Ice Cream Production Equipment?

With the rise in temperature, ice cream has become an indispensable part of people’s daily life. In particular, ice cream is deeply welcomed by people because of its rich nutrition and unique flavor. Therefore, how to clean the ice cream production equipment has become a major concern of ice cream practitioners.

Hygienic characteristics of ice cream

1. There is only one-time sterilization in the production process, and there is no processing when eating.
2. At present, the degree of airtightness and automation in the production of ice cream is small. And the production is the most mixed operation of machinery and labor, with complex processes and many pollution opportunities.
3. Ice cream is rich in nutrients. Under appropriate conditions, microorganisms will grow and reproduce rapidly.
   It can be seen that doing a good job of health management in the production process is an important step to improving product quality and preventing diseases. The cleaning and disinfection of ice cream machines or ice cream cones machines is a key link in the production of cold drinks.

Cleaning and disinfection of ice cream production equipment

In order to ensure the hygienic quality of products, you should select qualified equipment. Stainless steel and enamel products shall be selected for ice cream production. Generally speaking, we should clean all equipment and containers every day. The cleaning procedure and method shall be determined according to the type of equipment and process requirements. According to the process, it is divided into cleaning procedures for cold processing equipment (such as homogenizer, heat exchanger, freezer, and ice cream filling machine) and hot processing equipment (such as pre heater and pasteurizer).

The cold equipment cleaning procedure

1. Pre flushing: Flush the equipment with cold or warm water for 5-10 minutes.
2. Alkaline cleaning: Wash the equipment with an alkaline cleaning agent for 6-10 minutes, and set the temperature to 80-90 ℃. Start timing when the temperature is 80 ℃, the concentration is 1.5-2.5%, and the flow rate is 15t / h. In this way, the grease can be easily removed.
3. Hot water flushing: Flush twice with 65-70 ℃ hot water for 10 minutes each time. This removes grease and alkalis.
4. Steam sterilization: Flow steam is introduced into the equipment for heating, and the temperature is 90-100 ℃, which is maintained for 20-30 minutes. This can kill microbial propagules such as molds and yeasts in the equipment. But spores can still survive. If you want to kill spores, you must use high-pressure steam (pressure about 0.1MPa) and the corresponding temperature is 121.6 ℃. In this case, various microorganisms and their spores can be completely killed in 15-20 minutes.

UV disinfection

Most pathogenic bacteria die quickly under UV exposure, and even highly resistant bacterial spores can die within hours. Because of the strong UV penetration, it is only used for surface and environmental disinfection of production equipment. Ultraviolet rays are easily absorbed by the air, the germicidal lamp should be less than 2 meters away from the equipment to be treated, and the irradiation time should not be less than 3 hours per day. The sterilization power is generally 3-5 watts per square meter.
The above is the cleaning method for the ice cream machine and ice cream filling machine. Have you learned it?