Tipped as one of 2016’s superfood trends, seaweed is packed with minerals, vitamins, fibre, omega 3 and protein, and often added to food as a nutrient boost.
Claims that it can prevent colon cancer, control blood glucose level and aid digestion make it of significant dietary and health interest, while sustainable farming and harvesting have led to further recognition of seaweed as a ‘futurefood’.
Hosokawa Micron’s two stage seaweed processing system is designed to handle wet, moist, gritty seaweed, delivering fine to coarse, freshly harvested seaweed for drying or further processing.
The fibrous, wet, and often sandy or gritty, seaweed is however difficult to process with costly and time-consuming drying times. To reduce the drying process seaweed is often chopped to facilitate more rapid, less nutrient destructive drying processes.
Meeting the demand
For many years, the processing experts at Hosokawa Micron have offered processing solutions to alginate producers across the world. To meet the demands for milled, freshly harvested seaweed, we have developed a two stage system comprising of a Prebreaker and Vertical Disintegrator.
This low energy system offers uniform particle size reduction of wet or moist seaweeds for further processing, which offers higher levels of availability compared to conventional hammer mills.
Once the friable materials have passed through the initial size reduction (Prebreaker) stage, they are transferred directly to the Hosokawa Micron Vertical Disintegrator to be further reduced to a uniform particle size.
Size reduction
Designed for the reduction of fine to coarse, wet, moist or dry materials, the Hosokawa Micron Vertical Disintegrator provides automatic and continuous separation of disintegration resistant materials with redirection through the system from the exclusive secondary discharge.
Uniform particle size is achieved as materials are subjected to repeated impact and attritional force from the high speed rotating hammers, and carried by centrifugal force through a perforated sizing screen. The vertical screen frees itself of product instantaneously during processing, which is ideal for products with a high moisture content.
Barry Walmsley, Product Manager at Hosokawa Micron, says:
“The sturdy system, can operate at 12-20t/h. It is low noise and delivers product in a narrow particle size distribution, resulting in higher yields and less effluent.
The Disintegrator is designed to withstand corrosion caused by the low pH often involved in the process and erosion caused by the natural inclusions which determines a predominant use of higher abrasion resistant materials of manufacture.”
Hosokawa Micron are leading manufacturers in the development of size reduction equipment and technologies. For any specific requirements or product requests, please get in touch today.
