Problem / Challenge

A common problem in food processing is cooling products down after heating or cooking, for further processing such as seasoning or before packaging to avoid condensation in the package. Our customer has to cool pouches of soup products from 180 degrees F to 100 degrees. Pouches are produced at 80/min, and the required dwell time to cool the product throughout is 9 minutes, and this required 54 ft. of cooling belt at 6 ft. per minute. Floor Space was a major constraint and created a challenge to reach the required dwell time and production speed.

Solution

PSG designed a custom, compact 20 ft. long, 3-tier cooling tunnel with overhead cooling fans/coils and plenums to circulate the cool air through the product layers. We designed a flip chute at each level to turn and evenly mix the soup pouches so the product cooled equally throughout the center of the pouch. We used insulated panels to build a small refrigerated room in the middle of the process line, with compact infeed and discharge conveyors. This compact Multi-tier cooling Conveyor design optimized floor space and is working successfully for our customer to cool this product.