NUEVO SISTEMA PARA COMPRESIÓN DE ADITIVOS EN POLVO

Abstract

Food additives are substances not usually ingested as regular food but which are added to food so as to improve the nutritional quality, preservation, properties, manufacturing process, etc. In the agro--alimentary industry, two methods are fundamentally used to dose additives: control liquid (water dissolved additive) and tablets. The latter method displays doubtless advantages with respect to the former: optimal hygiene, more accurate dosing, longer lifer of equipment and machinery, less environmental pollution, etc., but it is not always possible to apply it. Some mixtures are specially hard to compress, when not impossible, due to the high erosion and corrosion that they cause in matrices and striker pins, the great adhesion of some compounds to the walls of the equipment or the low compressibility of some additives. In order to solve these disadvantages, the product design method known as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been used. The results obtained propose, among other modifications of the machinery, a new system denominated "SPLIT MATRIX". It consists of a matrix split in two parts, that will remain together during the filling and compression of the mixture, working as a conventional system, but that will be opened leaving a gap of a few millimeters during the expulsion, thus easing the process. Keywords: Additives, Food, Pills, QFD.