Juice Flotation
In juice flotation, suspended solids adhere to micro-bubbles of food grade nitrogen, creating a flocculate.
Vintech Pacific operates portable Velo Juice Flotation units capable of handling 30,000 litres of juice per hour. This system does away with the requirement for dedicated flotation tanks and the need for rotating top-suction equipment to remove the flocculated and floating juice solids.
Instead, the juice is pumped into the Velo, pressurized and dosed with a flocculation agent such as bentonite or bentonite/gelatine (gelatine is used for adhering solids and nitrogen used to float the solids).
The treated juice is then pumped to tank where the floc forms and floats to the surface. The clarified juice is then simply pumped out from underneath the flocculate. The remaining solids can be further filtered for additional juice recovery.
This technology has several advantages over other clarification techniques, notably control over the degree of clarification desired. In addition it can be used as a pre-treatment to improve the efficiency of other procedures such as crossflow filtration.