The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Technical decision · 1959–1962
Frigoscandia's 1962 FLoFREEZE froze each pea separately, ending the frozen block.
Frigoscandia used a fluidized air bed to quick-freeze each pea individually, so frozen foods stay loose, pourable and quick to freeze.
Frigoscandia
the move
Frozen peas and vegetables used to be flash-frozen in a block, then smashed apart with a machine called a Cluster-Buster. The brute force clogged, damaged and wasted a lot of product.
In 1959 Frigoscandia engineers Per-Oskar Persson and Leif Hanérus were asked to build a system that could handle chicken in winter and peas in summer. They borrowed fluidization from chemical engineering and used a strong air stream to lift and suspend each piece before freezing.
The first FLoFREEZE was piloted in 1960 in Helsingborg, Sweden, after trials in a bathtub, and the first production unit was installed in 1962. It was the world's first freezer to use fluidization for individual quick freezing.
Because each piece freezes separately, shoppers can pour out a handful instead of defrosting a brick; freezing one by one is also faster, so the same footprint freezes far more per hour and the product keeps its quality in mixed blends.
why it works
- Fluidized air suspends each piece so it freezes on its own
- Individual pieces pour and cook in portions, not one giant slab
- One-by-one freezing is faster, raising throughput in the same floor space
what transfers
The cheap fix is often to treat the many as a crowd of one: when the unit you handle is really thousands of pieces, processing them individually makes the batch usable a little at a time.
what came after
FLoFREEZE IQF became the standard way to freeze small items; Frigoscandia's equipment grew to about half the world market for food-freezing machinery, and IQF vegetables became a global staple.
references
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