Technical help for vat temp control please

[John@PC]

Ever thought about making cost effective pasteurizers?

Haven't gotten that far yet but will do some checking around (darn, you've gotten me to think about new products again ).  What would be the batch volume (min, max)?  Kern has given me some input on achieving the heating rate needed for bringing cold raw milk to culture temp. fast enough to prevent unwanted bacteria growth but I haven't talked to anyone about pasteurization.

[amiriliano]

Ha.

Well I see an opportunity. There are either small ones (5G) for around $400 that don't meet FDA requirements or ones that do starting at $15 K.

According to the milk sanitarian I spoke to, a vat pasteurizer has to have the following:

  A vat pasteurizer must have the following:  a recording thermometer (This one goes into the product), indicating thermometer (this one goes into the product), air space thermometer (this one is in the air space & doesn’t touch the product), a valve that is made of stainless steel w/ leak detect grooves, a form of air space heating (this is optional), & final the design of the vat must not have an hard corners (no square corners, they must have a radius to them). 

[John@PC]

Well I see an opportunity. There are either small ones (5G) for around $400 that don't meet FDA requirements or ones that do starting at $15 K.

Thanks amiriliano.  I've been doing a bit of homework and have a few thoughts I would like to pass on to you forum members who do their own pasteurization.  So as not to hijack your thread completely (I did borrow it for a time ) I'll start a new one specifically for "Small-batch pasteurization alternatives" or something like that.  I will come back and post a link to it.  Thanks again for the suggestion.