The application range of royal jelly freeze-drying process is very wide. It can be used to make royal jelly capsules, royal jelly oral liquid, royal jelly health products and other products. At the same time, due to its high stability and safety, it is also widely used in medical, health care and other fields.
The general production freeze-dried royal jelly powder is: peeling, thawing, mixing, filtering, loading, vacuum drying, discharging and temporary storage, crushing, mixing, and packaging.
1) Peel and thaw: remove the outer skin of the royal jelly and place it in the thawing room to defrost.
2) Mixing and filtration: Pour the royal jelly into a stainless steel container, rinse the container with purified water equivalent to 10%-20% of the weight of the batch of royal jelly, add the water from the container to the royal jelly, stir evenly, and mix everything evenly. Pass the royal jelly liquid through a 40-mesh screen and discard impurities.
3) Loading and laying trays: Pack the mixed and filtered royal slurry into the material trays of the freeze dryer. Each tray must be loaded with the same amount and thickness as possible.
4) Vacuum freeze-drying: pre-cooling stage, freezing stage and vacuum drying stage. In the pre-cooling stage: royal jelly is cooled to a temperature close to freezing point. This helps reduce crystallization and crystal growth during the freezing stage. During the freezing stage: royal jelly forms a thin layer on the freezing plate and freezes at low temperatures. The purpose of this stage is to freeze the water into ice crystals so that it can be more easily removed during the vacuum drying stage. In the vacuum drying stage: the royal jelly plates are placed into a vacuum chamber and dried at low temperatures. The purpose of this stage is to sublime the water in the royal jelly from the ice crystals and convert it into water vapor so that it can be expelled from the vacuum chamber.
5) Temporary storage of materials: After the freeze-drying is completed, prepare for discharging. The ambient humidity during discharging is required to be ≤50%. Otherwise, the freeze-dried materials will easily absorb moisture and fail to meet the requirements of freeze-dried products. Open the material cabin door to remove each tray. The freeze-dried royal jelly that is freeze-dried into blocks is put into large food bags, sealed and packaged, and temporarily stored in a transfer station.
6) Crushing and mixing: crush the block freeze-dried royal jelly, and crush the royal jelly freeze-dried powder according to the requirements of subsequent deep processing products.
7) Packing and warehousing: The materials are packed according to the loading volume requirements, and sealed on the sealer to ensure that the packaging bags are sealed. The packed products are randomly sampled and sent to the testing room for testing of relevant indicators, and are put into storage after passing the test.
Compared with traditional high-temperature drying technology, the advantages of royal jelly freeze-drying technology are:
1) It will not cause a lot of damage to biologically active substances, thereby ensuring the high-quality characteristics of the product;
2) Crush the materials that have lost moisture into dry powder, which has stable activity and is easy to store and transport;
3) It causes less damage to the biological tissue and cell structure and characteristics of royal jelly raw materials, effectively protecting the stability of many heat-sensitive active ingredients, such as proteins and enzymes, which will not denature and lose their biological activity;
4) The form of royal jelly freeze-dried powder is loose and the color basically does not change after drying.