4) Challenges in the company when employing the unit operation’s equipment, theory
Signature Market Sdn. Bhd. provide dried-freeze fruit product services to
their customers . Freeze drying is being increasingly used to store food for a longer
period of time. Other than food, pharmaceuticals industry were often used to preserve
their medicine using this method. Freeze-drying is dehydration of a substances at a
very low temperature. Signature market supplies a freeze-dried products which can be
completely hydrated and not lose any of its nutritions and their natural sweet (Ratti
2001) . Theoretically, freeze-drying can be also identified as lyophilization which
means to make a substance “solventliking”. The purpose of lyophilisation is still the
same, to increase product life-span where normally if a fruits last 2 months, freeze
drying caused the shelf life of the fruits to extend up to 2years if kept properly.
Venturing into food & beverages business can be quite demanding for a
company. Signature Market Sdn. Bhd. has documented some daring problems they
had to face to have a stable freeze-dried fruits business as of now .One of the
challenges in Signature Market Sdn. Bhd. confronted was when employing the unit
operation’s equipment is the refrigeration system . Preservation of cold system faced
problems of having F-Gas Regulation because the system is the key to the freezing
process . F-Gas Regulation is fluorinated gas that traps heat and prevents leak in a
system. Lyophilization need a temperature of (Ultra Low Temperature) ULT ( range
from -50C to -90C ) to operate efficiently, but existing refrigeration system does not
range with ULT. Thus, the refrigerants are considered not nature friendly and
non-economical. Therefore Signature market are facing a challenging task as
freeze-drying company wanting to design and create a large cascade system for ULT
range.
Food industry freeze-drying are currently dealing with over committed
energy to produce a small batch of dried fruits . Food processing industry is trying to
minimize the energy to produce a good amount of yield. To solve this problems,
company has come up with an idea to use a compressor for cooling . The refrigeration
system operate with multiple compressor connected to each sequences. This is
because numerous freeze-drying systems can be run where a centralized system will
prove more useful than several decentralized ones in energy balance theory. Wise
planning of systems will give to constant freezing perfomances where lead us to
energy saving.
Another major challenges that faced by Signature market Sdn. Bhd is cost.
Eventhough the company is well known and has expanded their capital, managing
cost played a big role in determining how far a business can go. Refrigeration system
of freeze-drying system is expensive because of its high energy and high maintenance
operation.Freeze-Dryers are sophisticated machines being able to produce the most
premium products available in the pharmaceutical, food processing, and many other
industries. As mentioned earlier, the energy required to freeze a fruit is double the
energy required for drying. To find the answer to this deteriorating food process
industry problems, it was ensured that the workers were trained for atleast a month to
conduct the machine. This to make sure that the system were not damaged by the
employees and causes lost to the company.
5)Explain in details any opportunity for improvement to improve the current process
employed in the company
Every problems has a creative solution, but not all risk should be taken. Thus,
Signature Market Sdn. Bhd. improve the system to increase the current process
employed in the company instead. Based on our studies, to improve the current
process of Signature Market is by improving the speed of the freeze drying. This can
be done by replacing larger ice crystals because bigger cold steam pathways will left
the dried pieces of the product when the crystal ice were sublimated. It was spotted
that slower shelf cooling does not affect the yield of ice crystals due to super cooling
effects.
Other than that, freeze drying fruits can be improved by knowing and be
conscious of the eutectic point of the fruits and monitor their temperature. It is very
important to keep the fruit stayed frozen throughout all steps and stages of freeze
drying. The eutectic temperature is a triple point where the temperature of the fruits
existed in solid state only. If the frozen fruits went to a higher temperature than
eutectic temperature, the fruits will turn to its normal state not solid freezing state.