Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Improperly cleaned soft serve ice cream machines are a known significant contributor to foodborne illnesses worldwide. Studies indicate that from 12% to over 50% of soft serve ice cream machines are contaminated with unsatisfactory levels of bacteria. Contamination issues are due largely to the complex and costly disassembly, cleaning and sanitizing (DCS) process required for all machines currently on the market. The DCS process can cost businesses thousands of dollars for each machine per year in wasted product, labor, and supplies. In addition, significant potential revenue is lost when the machine is out of service for cleaning.Inventherm is developing commercial soft serve ice cream and slush machines (SSMs) that virtually eliminates the DCS process, produces aseptic or sterile products, and slashes operating costs by several thousand dollars per machine, annually. While not the focus of the current development, Inventherm's technology can also be applied for producing sterile saline slush, which is used in surgical procedures for reducing tissue damage.During the Phase I effort Inventherm's processing technology will be experimentally verified on equipment designed and constructed as part of the project work. It is anticipated that Inventherm will demonstrate that it's technology can produce soft serve with a quality equal to that of conventional soft serve machines while eliminating the need for disassembly, cleaning and sanitizing of the SSM.
Animal Health Component
25%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
25%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of the research is to determine the feasibility of Inventherm's soft serve ice cream and slush machine (SSM) that eliminates the need for disassembly, cleaning and sanitizing. The research has three objectives.1. Design and testing of the novel freeze chamber for the SSM. The testing should demonstrate that the freeze chamber can produce soft serve with the desired mouthfeel (i.e. ice crystal size, overrun, and temperature. Furthermore the freeze times and durability should be acceptable for commercial viability.2. Fabricate a prototype SSM that demonstrates feasibility of a complete SSM system. The freeze chamber for the SSM will be incorporated into a complete system that includes drawing liquid product from a reservoir and continuously freezing and dispensing the product. For commercial viability, the SSM needs to be similar in size or smaller than existing equipment with a similar throughput.3. Preliminary manufacturing cost assessment. This objective addresses the technical risk that the manufacturing cost of Inventherm's SSM would bne unacceptable. For commerical success, increases in equipment cost should be offset by reduced cleaning costs, greater uptime and a greatly reduced risk of foodborne contamination.
Project Methods
The research project includes both analysis and experimental tasks. The project with incorporates basic and applied research and product development. Fundamental questions of the freezing and churning process in the novel freeze chamber will be investigated. Analytical techniques will include lumped parameter modeling of the freeze chamber including physics associated with heat transfer, fluid dynamics, dynamics and tribology. Other analysis techniques, such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are also anticipated.Expermental testing of the freeze chamber will be used to validate the analytical results and to gain additional knowledge that cannot be adequately determined otherwise. The primary evaluation of the success of the research project will be confirmation that the freeze chamber can product soft serve products that meet or exceed the quality produced by conventional machines while eliminating the costs and contamination challenges associated with keeping conventional machines clean.