Three important factors that might affect material quality

Conditioning is essential to the granulating or puffing process. Without a good conditioning system, there will not be a good granulating or puffing effect and there will be many factors that affect the quality of the tuner, this mainly depends on the following three factors.

1. The properties of the material

Due to the large number of components in the feed, the properties of the feed are different and the effects on the feed are different too. According to the composition of the main body, the material properties are divided into protein types, starch types, fiber types, fat types, thermal types and various others. The operating parameters should be different when quality is adjusted.

Protein type feed: protein is hydrophilic which means the moisture should not increase too much when conditioning, otherwise it can easily block the film hole, so utilizing superheated steam is better because heat is more important than humidifying when processing protein type feed.

Starch type feed: starch needs high temperature and high humidity to adjust the condition, so it is appropriate to use low-pressure superheated steam or add some moisture to the mixer.

Fiber type feed: Fiber has poor water retention and poor adhesion, so water content should not be too high, generally around 13% to 14%, the temperature control at about 55 to 60 ℃ is required. If the material temperature gets too high, the compressed particles are more likely to have cracks. Use a lower level of superheated steam or add a small amount of water to the mixer to reduce the temperature during pressing.

Fat type feed: Fat type feed water should have a lot of water content, for this reason, adopting higher superheated steam is beneficial to the fatty pellet.

Thermal type feed: thermal type feed requires low temperature when conditioning. The temperature control should be below 60 ℃, the water content should not be high, and as a result, we can adopt low superheated steam or add a small amount of moisture inside the mixing machine to reduce the material temperature.

2. The particle size and uniformity of the material

Due to a large number of components of the feed, the size and uniformity of particle size of the same type of powdery materials may vary, which makes it difficult to operate the tuner and puts forward higher requirements. Due to the requirement that the center of each particle is softened, when the small size granule has achieved the requirement, the large size granule will not yet have reached the requirement. The larger the difference between particle size, the larger the difference of granulating effect.

3. Material moisture

Water is an important factor affecting the quality of the adjustment. At the same time, the material has a high moisture content and the quality of the material is better than that of the low water content. Due to poor resistance to hot and humid in a microbiological level, under the effect of the steam, microorganisms can use hot water in their surroundings as a medium, therefore, the coagulation of microbial cell protein can speed up the microbial death (hot and humid material can cause microbial death one-third lower than low moisture materials). Therefore, under high moisture conditions for material such as salmonella mold and bacteria, plant , protease inhibitors and harmful factors can cause high levels of destruction and high starch  at the same time as well.