Cuddon FD80 general-purpose freeze dry equipment

Cuddon Freeze Dry has available the FD80 general-purpose freeze dry equipment. The machinery has an 80 kg ice capacity and 9 m² shelf area and is capable of drying a variety of biological, pharmaceutical, nutritional and general food products.

The chamber, door, hinges, shelf modules, trays and vapour condenser are constructed from AISI 304 stainless steel. The chamber is fitted with stainless steel pneumatically operated valves that isolate the vacuum line connection, drain, water defrost and vacuum release.

The shelf module contains 10 heat plates (shelves) fabricated from T304 stainless steel, which are removable for maintenance or cleaning.

The heating system is a thyristor controlled electric boiler, using glycol-based heating fluid. A cooling heat exchanger is provided in the circuit for reducing the temperature of the plates.

The refrigeration condensing unit is built with capacity control to allow economical use of the low-temperature R507 refrigerant and includes a water-cooled condenser. The vapour condenser is comprised of a T304 stainless steel tube in parallel circuits to form a direct expansion refrigerated coil.

A lower temperature option can be manufactured if required, giving -55°C vapour condenser temperature, and -35/+70°C shelf freezing/heating.

The control system is an Omron PLC interfaced with an Omron touch-screen control panel. The automated system will ramp/reduce energy to govern sublimation pressure to preset parameters. The equipment has a 15 x 15-step recipe programming capacity, 250 batch storage and software for data retrieval and analysis. The in-built modem allows remote access for monitoring and service.