Freeze drying, simply put, is taking an item and removing the moisture content from it without physically heating the product.
The science of lyophilisation uses heat energy in a vacuum chamber to convert ice crystals to a vapour – without ever passing through the liquid phase; it sublimates the moisture from the product – removing the water and leaving everything else behind.
You can freeze dry anything with a moisture content. As a process, it retains product integrity and has a wide range of cross-industry applications.
Retains the Good Stuff
Freeze drying, simply put, is taking an item and removing the moisture content from it without physically heating the product. It is used by industries including food processing, dairy, pet food, and nutraceuticals. It is also used for cannabis drying, document recovery, taxidermy and research, among other applications. – Anything with a moisture content can be freeze dried.
Freeze drying (or sublimation or lyophilization) removes only the water, and leaves the ‘good stuff’ behind, retaining nutrients, enzymes, flavours, colours, and bioactivity. In their concentrated form – without the degradation over time caused by heat, light or oxygen – shelf life is increased and flavours and colours are often intensified.
Creating Value
Using fresh, frozen, fermented or cooked products as a starter, freeze drying provides our clients with the opportunity to find a niche or commercialise a product to sell at a premium. Freeze drying presents an opening to create value from waste, creating new product lines and deferring waste from landfill.
Products can be freeze dried whole, sliced, minced, slurried, or in liquid form. Freeze drying can form part of a processing chain, with further processing occurring prior-to or post-freeze drying to obtain a particular desired characteristic of the product being dried.
Flexible Usage
You can freeze dry anything. As Cuddon Freeze Dryers use trays in a batch process, there are no limitations around the product solids and moisture content. Clients are not limited to one product type per machine.
Our clients use Cuddon Freeze Dryers to dry fruits and vegetables, seeds, skins, leafy matter, seaweeds, meats, fish, liquids and slurries. Also, our machines are used for fermented products, left over waste from commercial processes, agri-products (soil, grass, animal leavings), as well as performing an essential role in books and document drying, shipwrecks, rare artefacts, taxidermy, and electrical components. Freeze drying is used extensively in research (including vaccine production) as a method to stabilise a product and to remove moisture to enable testing and analysis.
