Lets talk about belt presses!
At Juicing.Systems we have been making juice for a long time. Over the years we have produced juice with a variety of systems, including a rack and cloth press. After many 14 hour days of juicing, we knew there had to be a better way to go about getting the juice out of our fruit. After looking around extensively, we wound up purchasing a Kreuzmayr belt press. Read the full story of Juicing.Systems.
We love using it so much that we want to share the ease of using the belt press with others who were looking to eliminate the batch process in favor of a continuous process. Ease of use, coupled with higher yields and decreased labor requirements made the belt press an attractive machine. This is how Juicing.Systems was born.
Why did we decide to go this route, when other options such as larger rack and cloth systems, bladder presses, squeeze boxes, and a host of other options for extracting our juice were available. This took some serious thought, and we wanted to share our experience with you. We have had many questions about the system, as we’re sure that you do.
Over the next few weeks we will be examining some of the questions we’ve had to ask ourselves, and questions we’ve heard from you while trying to decide which direction to take your process.
We will address questions, myths, and misconceptions in processing fruit with a belt press.
Are my yields higher using a Belt Press because water is added…. or is this a myth?
Our Kreuzmayr KEB 750 can press up to 500 litres of apple juice in approximately 15 minutes from two bins of apples.
In determining the answer to this question we measured the water coming out of the press while the belt washer was operating with no fruit being run through the press. Our testing found that 1 liter of water came out of the press while operating over the 15 minutes. This is a .2% addition of water to the 500 liter yield. Having said this, there is a small amount of residual water captured in the weave of the belt that may be squeezed through when operating with mash. It is hard to determine the exact amount. Even if we double the measured amount, it still amounts to only 0.5% of water added.
The simple answer is yes, we are adding water, but it’s pretty low in relation to the overall yield.
We of course offer a air knife blower solution for the folks that are still worried about adding even such a small amount. This would virtually eliminate any water being carried into the juice.
If it’s not water, why does the press have greater yields?
Depending on the product pressed, the Single Belt Press shows a 5-15% greater yield than other pressing systems.
Our three roller system starts with a large roller and works into smaller rollers. Because of this, the same amount of mash has to travel around the progressively smaller radius of the rollers. This increases the pressure exerted on the mash. In addition to this, we can manipulate the mash thickness, the belt speed and pressure of the single belt press. These three variable can easily be altered to adapt to the fruit we are processing.
The fruit pulp is dispensed across the main pressing roller and across the width of the belt to start the initial juice extraction. The pulp is progressively squeezed over the rollers to achieve an optimum juice yield of up to 75%.
When compared to other methods such as pressing with a rack and cloth or squeeze box style press, having a thinner and more uniform cake running through the rollers allows us to place higher pressure on more of the pomace. By running it through 3 different rollers, each roller smaller than the last, we increase the pressure placed on the cake with each consecutive roller, extracting all possible juice from the fruit.
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