What are the milk sterilization processes?
In the industrial production process of milk, strict sterilization procedures are generally required to ensure quality and safety.
At present, there are two main kinds of sterilization equipment applied to milk sterilization, ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization equipment and pasteurization equipment. Ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization is a sterilization process that heats milk to more than 120℃ and cools it to room temperature after a few seconds. It can effectively kill microorganisms and spores in milk, while retaining most nutrients in milk.
Ultra high temperature milk sterilization equipment has the advantages of accurate temperature control, short sterilization time, and significant sterilization effect. After ultra high temperature sterilization, the shelf life of milk can reach 3 months and above. Normal temperature milk on the market is usually through ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization production, ultra-high temperature sterilization technology makes the shelf life of milk products greatly extended, convenient storage and transportation of milk, so that the sales scope of milk is further expanded.
Milk pasteurization technology is a popular sterilization process in the dairy industry in the past two years. It is to heat the milk to 62℃-65℃ for 30 minutes, or heat the milk to 75℃-90℃ for 15-16 seconds to sterilize the milk. Milk pasteurization machine kills most microorganisms due to low heating temperatures, but retains a small number of harmless or beneficial heat-resistant microorganisms or spores.
As a result, pasteurized milk needs to be kept in cold storage and has a relatively short shelf life. Many consumers believe that compared with pasteurization equipment, uHT equipment in sterilization, will destroy more nutrients. But in fact, according to the experiment, there is no big difference in nutrients between the two. However, the temperature difference of sterilization will cause the taste difference between the two, and the pasteurization process with lower sterilization temperature will retain better taste and flavor.
Generally speaking, retail sales of raw milk quality control is lax, and consumers are easy to cause secondary pollution when processing. Therefore, consumers need to be cautious about buying raw milk. Now, the maturity and application of ultra-high temperature sterilization equipment, pasteurization equipment, so that the quality and safety of milk has been better guaranteed, but also for consumers to bring more product choices.