Main benefits
    • Guarantees 100% retention of aroma, flavor and color during the concentration step
    • Preserves heat-sensitive components thanks to gentle, sub-zero process conditions
    • Minimizes energy consumption compared to evaporation
    • Provides easy-to-clean and low maintenance equipment
    • Offers flexibility for multiproduct processing
Main applications
    • Fruit & vegetable juices
    • Coffee & tea extracts
    • Herbal extracts
    • Beer
    • Wine
    • Cider
    • Vinegar
Process

Functioning principle of freeze concentration

Freeze concentration is the crystallization of water to ice and the subsequent separation of the ice crystals from the concentrated liquid.

Figure 1 shows the main equipment of Sulzer’s freeze concentration technology:

  • Filling the liquid, which needs to be concentrated, into a feed tank.
  • Crystallization of water to ice with the help of the scraped cooling crystallizer. The slurry is continuously circulated until the crystals reach their optimum size to ensure the subsequent solid-liquid separation
  • Separation of the ice crystals from the concentrated liquid. This step is performed in a wash column following the sequence showed in Figure 2.
white paper freeze concentration
Fig. 1 The process flow diagram (PFD) of Sulzer’s freeze concentration technology
white paper freeze concentration
Fig. 2 Illustration of the separation steps taking place in the wash column
Applications

Freeze concentration has been used in the food industry for more than 30 years. It is a proven technology to gently concentrate vegetable and fruit juices, to produce coffee, tea and herbal extracts, to create milk powder, or to thicken vinegar. Beer, wine and cider are concentrated to ease storage and transport, to improve their quality or to create special products (Fig. 3).

freeze concentration industry
Fig. 3 Application areas for freeze concentration
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