• Malik Engineers

Cooker Extruder (Gelatinizer)

Malik Engineers manufacture Single Screw Cooker Extruder (Gelatinizer) which can be used for the preparation of pre-gelatinized starch from maize, tapioca, and for cooking wheat, soy flour, etc. It can also be used as a preliminary step to prepare gelatinized noodles that can then be transferred to former (cooling) extruder to produce extruded pellets. And the Cooker Extruder can also be used to produce directly expanded Snack food from maize, rice, wheat, tapioca flour, e.g. light weight, expanded cylindrical collets (corn curls).

The Cooker Extruder is a continuously operating machine, which has a specially profiled screw running in a precision grooved barrel. The premixed food materials are properly blended and hydrated with water inside a separate pre conditioner chamber. The hydrated food materials are continuously fed into the Cooker Extruder from to, via a force screw feeder, which ensures proper and even feed to the cooker screw. The cooking screw of extruder is driven through electric motor provided with variable speed control of smooth control of the speed of the cooking screw. The stationery barrel is electrically heated and water-cooled for precise temperature control of material inside the extruder. It is also provided with longitudinal grooves in the barrel interior surface to increase the friction between the material and barrel surface for maximum conveying efficiency of the food materials and maximum throughput. The rotating screw picks up the food material and conveys them forward, while so doing it gradually compacts and cooks the ingredients in form of a dough mass. This dough mass as it emerges out of the extruder, is continually cut into small lengths by suitable set of rotating knives working against the end of cooking screw. The cut product can then be pulverized afterwards to get free flowing powder of gelatinized product. The extruder can be fitted with die of desired shape at the discharge end to produce directly expanded (2G snack food) food product. In the production of latter, the meal is cooked inside the extruder under influence of elevated heat and pressure, and the moisture present in to product escapes out of the product in the form of steam, due to sudden pressure release at the die and is cut to desired length by the rotating knife leaving a cylinder-shaped collet. Such product is usually light and has low bulk density.

For producing extruded pellets (3G snacks), the gelatinizer can be used for cooking the food materials and cut into small lengths at the Cooker Extruder. After this, the cooked dough needs to be transferred to low shear forming extruder where the cooked dough is cooled and forced out through pellet die of suitable shape.

The Cooker Extruder can be used for preparing pre-cooked soy-wheat-rice or other flours by mixing with water in required proportion before extrusion. The cooked flour usually exit from extruder as lumps which need to be dried further in suitable drier for extracting moisture to safe levels before crushing into fine powder on hammer mill/pulversiser to get precooked or pre-gelatinized material.

The Cooker Extruder is provided with solid-state controls for smooth speed control of the screw rotation and has digital temperature controls & sensors for the accurate temperature control of the product.

The Cooker is available in screw sizes of 50mm, 65mm, 75mm and 100mm to get output rates of 25 Kg, 40 Kg, 60 Kg, and 90 Kg per hour respectively.