Apparatus and Process for Producing Crushed Product, Crushed Product and Processed Good

• US 20090140084A1
• Filed: 04/27/2006
• Published: 06/04/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/27/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Tsukuba Food Science, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Tsukuba Food Science, Inc.
• Inventors: Horigane, Akira
• Granted Patent: US 7,886,996 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 241/6
• CPC Class Codes: B02C 7/13 for grain mills
• CPC Class Codes: B02C 7/17 Cooling or heating of discs
• CPC Class Codes: B02C 7/184 with vertical axis
• CPC Class Codes: B02C 7/186 Adjusting, applying pressure to, or controlling distance between, discs
• CPC Class Codes: B02C 7/188 Driving mechanisms

Abstract

A nondenatured ground matter with high quality is produced through efficient grinding while preventing overheating by, even in the case of grinding a material to be ground having a flexible thin film, such as cereal grain, efficiently crushing the thin film of low grindability to thereby obtain a ground matter of fine grains with uniform size by the use of simple apparatus and operation. A raw material is fed through raw material supply channel (55,56) into raw material introduction part (11) between fixed grinding disc (4) and moving grinding disc (5). The moving grinding disc (5) is hung down by means of drive shaft (21), and the gap between the same and the fixed grinding disc (4) is adjusted by means of gap adjusting means (7). While preventing any heat transfer from drive unit (8), power is transmitted to the drive shaft (21) so as to rotate the moving grinding disc (5). The raw material while being transferred through coarse grinding distributing channel (17) is coarsely ground and any raw material of low grindability is crushed by crushing part (61), distributed to microgrinding part (62) and microground to thereby attain production of ground matter (60).

Claims

1. An apparatus for producing a crushed product comprising

a stationary crushing disc provided in its central portion with a raw material entrance port and in the outer region on its underside with a crush face,

a rotatable crushing disc disposed beneath the stationary crushing disc in opposition thereto so as to build up a mill gap therebetween and provided, on its upper side, in the inner region with an abrader face, in the outer circumferential region with a fine-crush face and in the inner region with a plurality of rough-crush dispensing grooves extending from the central portion to the fine-crush face in a form bent towards the rotation tail,

a driving shaft which is fixedly connected to the central portion of the rotatable crushing disc and extends through the stationary crushing disc up above the stationary crushing disc,

a power transmission means transmitting a rotational power from a driving device to the driving shaft under prevention of heat transfer,

a mill gap adjusting means which suspends the rotational crushing disc through the driving shaft and is operable to adjust the mill gap between the stationary and the rotatable crushing discs,

a cooling means for cooling the stationary crushing disc and/or the rotatable crushing disc,

a raw material supply path for supplying the raw material to the raw material entrance port in the stationary crushing disc and

a crushed product receiver for receiving the crushed product expelled out of the mill gap at the disc periphery.

2. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the stationary crushing disc is provided, in the inner region on the underside thereof, with an abrader face and/or a plurality of rough-crush dispensing grooves.

3. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the stationary crushing disc is provided on the abrader face with a layer of an abrader material.

4. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the rotatable crushing disc is provided on its fine-crush face with a plurality of thin grooves extending from the central portion to the outer circumferential region in a form bent towards the rotation tail.

5. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the rough-crush dispensing groove is provided on the side towards the rotation head thereof with a dispensing section shallowing towards the outside periphery of the groove.

6. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein a plurality of raw material supply paths are arranged for supplying a plurality of raw materials to the raw material entrance port.

7. A process for producing a crushed product, comprising

supplying a raw material to be crushed via one or more raw material supply paths to a mill gap between a stationary crushing disc provided in its central portion with a raw material entrance port and in the outer region on its underside with a crush face, on the one hand, and a rotatable crushing disc disposed beneath the stationary crushing disc in opposition thereto and provided on its upper side, in the inner region, with an abrader face, in the outer circumferential region, with a fine-crush face and, in the inner region, with a plurality of rough-crush dispensing grooves extending from the central portion to the fine-crush face in a form bent towards the rotation tail, on the other hand,

adjusting the mill gap between the stationary crushing disc and the rotatable crushing disc by means of a mill gap adjusting means which suspends the rotatable crushing disc through a driving shaft,

rotating the rotatable crushing disc by transmitting a rotational power from a driving device to the driving shaft under prevention of heat transfer while cooling the stationary crushing disc and/or the rotatable crushing disc,

effecting a rough crushing of the raw material while the raw material is caused to travel through the rough-crush dispensing groove from the raw material entrance port and, at the same time, breaking down a hardly crushable raw material between the underside of the stationary disc and the abrader face of the rotatable crushing disc and dispensing the resulting roughly crushed mass to the mill gap between the crush faces from the rough-crush dispensing grooves to subject it to fine crushing and

collecting the resulting crushed product expelled out of the mill gap between the stationary and the rotatable crushing discs at the disc periphery.

8. The process as claimed in claim 7, wherein a plurality of raw materials are supplied from a plurality of raw material supply paths to the raw material entrance port to effect co-crushing.

9. The process as claimed in claim 8, wherein one of the raw materials is a coolant so that the co-crushing is effected under cooling.

11. A crushed product obtained by the process as claimed in claim 7.

12. Processed goods which comprise the crushed product as claimed in claim 11.

13. The process as claimed in claim 7, wherein the crushed product is produced using an apparatus comprising

a stationary crushing disc provided in its central portion with a raw material entrance port and in the outer region on its underside with a crush face,

a rotatable crushing disc disposed beneath the stationary crushing disc in opposition thereto so as to build up a mill gap therebetween and provided, on its upper side, in the inner region with an abrader face, in the outer circumferential region with a fine-crush face and in the inner region with a plurality of rough-crush dispensing grooves extending from the central portion to the fine-crush face in a form bent towards the rotation tail,

a driving shaft which is fixedly connected to the central portion of the rotatable crushing disc and extends through the stationary crushing disc up above the stationary crushing disc,

a power transmission means transmitting a rotational power from a driving device to the driving shaft under prevention of heat transfer,

a mill gap adjusting means which suspends the rotational crushing disc through the driving shaft and is operable to adjust the mill gap between the stationary and the rotatable crushing discs,

a cooling means for cooling the stationary crushing disc and/or the rotatable crushing disc,

a raw material supply path for supplying the raw material to the raw material entrance port in the stationary crushing disc and

a crushed product receiver for receiving the crushed product expelled out of the mill gap at the disc periphery.

10. (canceled)