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Cornell professor of food science engineering Syed Rizvi and Michael E. Wagner, Ph.D. have received a patent on a process for producing Ice Cream instantly (within 3 seconds).
In the traditional method of making ice cream, the dairy-based mix flows through a heat-exchanging barrel, where ice crystals form and get scraped by blades.
With this new method, highly pressurized carbon dioxide passes over a nozzle that, in turn, creates a vacuum to draw in the liquid ice cream. When carbon dioxide goes from a high pressure to a lower pressure, it cools the mixture to about minus 70 degrees C – freezing the mixture into ice cream, which jets out of another nozzle into a bowl, ready to eat.
Instant ice cream can be served right on the spot, all without the challenges of commercial transportation “cold chains,” in which the product must be frozen and maintained at minus 20 degrees Celsius. To guard against failing spots in the cold-temperature transportation chain, commercial ice cream makers add stabilizers and emulsifiers.
The cold chain is energy intensive, making the new process desirable from an energy and cost perspective, as well as reducing undesirable additives.
Cornell is currently exploring licensing opportunities.
The patent "Process and apparatus for rapid freezing of consumable and non-consumable products using the expansion of dense gas " is available on-line.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 31 2020, @11:47PM (2 children)
I could see specific parts being patentable if they're all shiny and new but the idea of making shit cold by exploiting phase change isn't by any stretch of the imagination novel or non-obvious. It's been done so many times and in so many ways (your body even does it with sweat) that no specific application of it should be patentable by now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2020, @01:52AM
This technique is one of the ways they make fine metal powders. They heat a metal or metal combination and shoot it through a nozzle using high pressure (typically an inert gas) to make a very fine metal powder.
Using a method like this to make ice cream seems to be novel, so worth of a patent.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday June 01 2020, @04:22AM
I was wondering about that myself. Liquid nitrogen ice cream has been a popular demonstration in science classes for a very long time. It's sometimes used in culinary competitions as well since it;s a lot faster than an ice cream machine and the ice crystals formed are extremely small.