Handling milk and cheese powders with high fat content requires appropriate environmental controls and special handling. High temperatures or excessive conveyance speeds tend to heat fat, which separates and smears. Without proper storage temperature, conveyance methods, and flow speed controls, milk and cheese powders can build up and clog equipment around pipe bends or receivers. The ideal automated bulk handling system incorporates features that reduce the chance of fat separation and includes easy-to-clean designs in case they do.
Milk/Cheese Powder Attributes
Toxicity
Low
High
Abrasiveness
soft
hard
Friable
Solid
delicate
Combustible
Low
High
Flowability
free-flowing
poor
Hygroscopic
not
high
Bulk Density (lb/CF)
light
heavy
particle Size
Coarse
fine
Milk and Cheese Powder Handling: Overview
Depending on their source — either animal or vegetable — milk and cheese powders have either high fat or high protein content. Either way, milk and cheese powders complicate bulk material handling. Whether they’re used in producing snacks, mixes and blends, or candy and confections, ensuring their smooth flow through a process is key to effective bulk handling. Maintaining proper environmental conditions prevents the separation or loss of fats, while proper dust mitigation minimizes explosion risks. Beyond managing unique ingredient characteristics, dry bulk handling systems must also provide dependable first-in/first-out flow to maximize product freshness, maintain batch control, and preserve hygienic conditions. AZO’s design and engineering team will deliver the dry bulk ingredient handling solution that safeguards product purity for any milk or cheese powder.
Milk and Cheese Powder Handling: Common Challenges
Processors handling milk and cheese powder must prevent fat separation to avoid equipment clogs.
Processors handling milk and cheese powder must prevent fat separation to avoid equipment clogs.
Food manufacturers using milk and cheese powders must meet hygiene and food safety requirements.
Food manufacturers using milk and cheese powders must meet hygiene and food safety requirements.
Product safety is a critical concern for food manufacturers using milk and cheese powder ingredients, as contamination can not only affect quality, but also pose risks to consumers. Whether storing, dosing, weighing, or conveying these bulk dry ingredients, processors must comply with proper hygienic handling practices through regular sanitation and wash-downs. They must also eliminate cross-contamination risks, verify, and document cleanliness, and prevent allergen cross-contact.
Milk and cheese powders’ different properties require different bulk ingredient handling approaches.
Milk and cheese powders’ different properties require different bulk ingredient handling approaches.
The proteins, fat, and sugars that are all part of milk and cheese powders behave differently when moving through a bulk material handling system. To ensure high quality products, milk and cheese powders need to arrive at the mixer fully intact and complete. The design of the automated bulk handling equipment used in the system must account for these complicated ingredients to ensure reliability and consistent product quality.
Milk and cheese powders require a properly conditioned environment.
Milk and cheese powders require a properly conditioned environment.
Some ingredients, such as milk and cheese powder, are hygroscopic. Because they will readily absorb moisture, they are prone to clumping and resist flow. Proper environmental controls, such as dehumidifiers, are necessary to prevent clumping, sticking, caking, or forming of bridges in storage bins. Providing the necessary equipment to control the environment around all bulk ingredients is critical to optimize safe and reliable bulk flow.
Handling milk and cheese powder requires proactive dust mitigation.
Handling milk and cheese powder requires proactive dust mitigation.
The high volumes of dust generated by milk and cheese powders are prone to ignition and a source of pest infestation. Explosion protection requires either suppression or venting to the outside the facility. Fugitive dust in a food plant is also an open invitation to unwanted pests. This is an especially troublesome problem in hard to reach or hidden areas. Every bulk ingredient handling system must incorporate explosion protection and dust mitigation equipment to safeguard a food manufacturing operation and its customers.
Bulk ingredient handling requires space for explosion protection.
Bulk ingredient handling requires space for explosion protection.
Any bulk ingredient handling operation must ensure adequate space for the installation of explosion protection and dust mitigation equipment. This may require some creativity in design and installation to ensure that necessary protection can fit into the available square footage — or be located in proximity to an exterior wall or roof — for venting. This can be especially challenging when adding explosion protection in an existing manufacturing plant.