Low-temperature fruit juice evaporator

加拿大大西洋地区的苹果产业是国际公认的。由于独特的凉爽气候条件，当地的苹果具有独特的酚类物质，这决定了它们的味道和健康益处。虽然大多数苹果都是作为新鲜农产品出售的，但其中很大一部分经过增值加工制成苹果汁、苹果酒和苹果派。我们的行业合作伙伴苹果谷食品公司是加拿大最大的馅饼制造商，致力于优质、节能和技术驱动的创新。苹果谷的具体问题是，他们的大产量和高质量标准导致每年产生超过500万磅的苹果废物流。为了解决废物流管理问题，该公司正在寻找创新技术来实现苹果废物的增值回收。在工业和大学初步探讨的基础上，提出了一种通过冷压和水蒸发高效提取原汁的新概念。然而，这个概念是新的，需要额外的中试规模的研究。这将是苹果谷与亚历克斯·马丁年科博士（达尔豪西大学）之间的首次合作，他在低温干燥和蒸发方面拥有丰富的专业知识。该项目的目标是研究材料和能源回收的效率，以及在中试水平上的新概念的可扩展性。该项目将耗时6个月，通过将工业规模的风险降至最低，将使行业受益。在本项目中获得的有关能源效率和苹果汁质量的知识将用于节能低温蒸发器的工业规模。本项目产生的知识产权归苹果谷食品公司所有。预计这项研究的商业应用将使苹果谷解决节能和当前废物管理问题。该项目的实施将展示产学合作在创新工艺/产品研发方面的潜力，并促进向其他食品行业利益相关者的技术转移。

Atlantic Canada is internationally recognized for their apple industry. Due to unique cool-climate conditions,local apples have a distinctive phenolic profile, which determines their flavor and health benefits. Althoughmost of the apples are sold as a fresh produce, a large portion undergo value-added processing to make applejuice, apple cider and apple pies. Our industry partner, Apple Valley Foods is the largest pie manufacturer inCanada with a strong commitment to premium quality, energy savings and technology driven innovation. Thespecific problem of Apple Valley is that their large production volume and high quality standards result in thegeneration of significant apple waste stream of more than 5 Million lbs annually. To address the problem ofwaste stream management, the company is looking for innovative technologies for a value-added apple wasterecovery. Based on a preliminary discussion between industry and university, a novel concept of a highlyefficient extraction of raw juice through cold-pressing and water evaporation was proposed. However, theconcept is new and additional pilot scale research is required. This will be a first time partnership betweenApple Valley and Dr. Alex Martynenko (Dalhousie University), who has significant expertise inlow-temperature drying and evaporation. The goal of this project is investigate the efficiency of the materialand energy recovery, as well as scalability of a novel concept on the pilot-scale level. This project will take sixmonths and will benefit industry by minimizing risks of industrial scaling. The knowledge on energy efficiencyand apple juice quality gained in this project will be used for an industrial scaling of energy-efficient lowtemperature evaporator. IP arising from this project will belong to Apple Valley Foods. It is expected thatcommercial application of this research will allow Apple Valley to address both energy saving and currentwaste management problems. The project implementation will demonstrate the potential of anindustry-university collaborative effort for innovative process/product research and development, and boosttechnology transfer to other food industry stakeholders.