What is aroma?
Coffee aroma – the best part of the coffee extract – is volatile. In order to avoid loss of the aroma when the coffee extract is concentrated/evaporated before spray drying or freeze drying, the aroma fraction must be recovered and added to the coffee concentrate.
The aroma fraction from the extraction plant IC/FIC™ is passed through an aroma recovery plant where the aroma is stripped off by heating the coffee extract to a temperature of higher than 100 ̊C. As it passes a flash chamber, operated under vacuum, the aroma rich vapour is separated, distilled and concentrated in a distillation column and then condensed and cooled. Further concentration of the aroma can be done in a membrane filtration (Reverse Osmosis) plant.
The liquid aroma is collected and stored in a tank. From here the aroma is added to the concentrated extract before further processing – either sold as final coffee extract – or spray dried or freeze dried.