Cheese is what you get from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, and other
mammals by coagulating the milk and draining the whey. This is
accomplished first by acidification with a bacterial culture and then by
adding an enzyme to coagulate the milk.
The spray drying process for cheese powder
Cheese
powder is mainly used in dips, dressings, biscuits, chips, and directly as
flavoring on hot dishes like spaghetti and soups. In order to spray dry
cheese, it is necessary to bring it into a liquid form. This is done by a
normal melting process where the cheese rind is removed if necessary, the
cheese is disintegrated, and during heating and agitation melting salts such as
phosphates and citrates are added together with water.
The aim is to obtain a solid content of about 35 % and a temperature of 75 °
C in order to get a feed that is not too viscous for atomization. The drying is
done in a conventional spray
dryer. The cooling of the powder is done in a VIBRO-FLUIDIZER™ supplied
with ambient air in the first section and cold dehumidified air in the last
section.
The integrated belt dryer
FILTERMAT™ has proved especially advantageous for cheese
powder as it is discharged in an agglomerated form. Further, the fines
fraction is practically zero and thus does not present any operational
problems.
As a certain amount of aroma is lost during the drying, it is recommended to
use aged cheese. In order to avoid problems with the odor form, the exhaust
air can be filtered through activated carbon filters.