by Prof Mohammed Y Al-Saiady
First published in International Aquafeed, January – February 2015
Extrusion is a cooking process that typically uses high temperature and high pressure for a short period of time. The first extruder was developed in the 1930s for pasta; extrusion was later modified for the production of pet food and fish feeds as well as human foods like snacks, breakfast cereals and sweets. The extrusion process begins with preconditioning the meal using steam and water to form a hot, moist mash.
The process has the flexibility to produce diets with a wide range of fat levels, densities, shapes and sizes. It also has the capability to produce floating, semi-sinking and sinking pellets for shrimp and pelagic fish. Extrusion has been used to manufacture shrimp feed since the early 1970s, but not widely adopted due to a persistent tendency for expansion in extruded feeds, which leads to undesirable flotation.
Expansion is exacerbated by the use of smaller die openings. To minimise flotation, feed manufacturers were forced to limit inclusion levels of starch, which tended to increase raw material costs. These constraints have been virtually eliminated through recent advances in extrusion technology, such as adjustments in screw design and speed, changes in die configuration and vacuum venting of the extruder barrel. It is now possible to produce 100 percent sinking extruded shrimp feeds with densities equivalent to those of pelleted feeds.
Extruded feed has the advantage of reducing raw material expenses, achieved by the substitution of high levels of wheat flour with lower levels of less expensive starch. This is possible due to the high moisture, temperature and pressure within extruders, which lead to nearly complete gelatinisation of a wide range of starches.
Extruded feeds utilise relatively high levels of moisture, which can be added in the form of flavors and palatability enhancers such as fish, dried solubles and flavorful enzymatic digests of seafood waste. This offers the potential to produce a new generation of highly palatable shrimp feeds without reliance on expensive marine protein such as squid meal and krill meal.
The rate of swelling of extruded feeds can also be manipulated to deliver feeds of varying ‘softness’. The swelling is a function of starch fragmentation, also known as dextrinisaton, which can be controlled by the degree of shear exerted by the extruder screw.
The 1995 study Physiochemical properties of extruded pelleted shrimp feeds with various wheat flours conducted by GH Ryu and coauthors at Kansas state university in Kansas, USA showed an 89 percent correlation between the extent of starch gelatinisation and the water stability of 10 Asian shrimp feeds. Other studies on conventional single-pelleted feeds for terrestrial animals reported that only about 20 percent of the starch is gelatinised. This explains why typical poultry feed disintegrates in water within minutes of immersion.
In addition, pelleting systems for shrimp feed use advanced manufacturing techniques such as fine grinding of raw materials, multiple steam conditioners, higher moisture levels, pelleting dies with higher compression ratios, post-pelleted conditioning and drying. These techniques increase the starch gelatinisation levels of extruded shrimp feeds to 80 – 95 percent compared with conventional pelleted shrimp feeds.
In a 12-week study in 2000, Albert Tacon and co-workers at the Oceanic Institute in Hawaii, USA compared single feed formulation in pelleted or extruded forms and two different sizes; results reported in February 2003 showed higher shrimp survival and weight gain and greater feed efficiency from extruded feed.
These results are being validated on a commercial scale in Korea, Malaysia and Brazil. Compensation for the vitamin losses thought to be slightly higher in extrusion than in pelleting can be easily accomplished by slight fortification of premixes.
Finally, recent developments in extrusion processing allow the production of sophisticated 100 percent sinking diets with lower cost and better performance than conventional pelleted feeds. Its advantages are expected to become more apparent, since the additional benefits of higher liquid addition, greater control of swelling and greater pasteurisation further contribute to higher performance.
Read the magazine HERE.
First published in International Aquafeed, January – February 2015
Extrusion is a cooking process that typically uses high temperature and high pressure for a short period of time. The first extruder was developed in the 1930s for pasta; extrusion was later modified for the production of pet food and fish feeds as well as human foods like snacks, breakfast cereals and sweets. The extrusion process begins with preconditioning the meal using steam and water to form a hot, moist mash.
The process has the flexibility to produce diets with a wide range of fat levels, densities, shapes and sizes. It also has the capability to produce floating, semi-sinking and sinking pellets for shrimp and pelagic fish. Extrusion has been used to manufacture shrimp feed since the early 1970s, but not widely adopted due to a persistent tendency for expansion in extruded feeds, which leads to undesirable flotation.
Expansion is exacerbated by the use of smaller die openings. To minimise flotation, feed manufacturers were forced to limit inclusion levels of starch, which tended to increase raw material costs. These constraints have been virtually eliminated through recent advances in extrusion technology, such as adjustments in screw design and speed, changes in die configuration and vacuum venting of the extruder barrel. It is now possible to produce 100 percent sinking extruded shrimp feeds with densities equivalent to those of pelleted feeds.
Extruded feed has the advantage of reducing raw material expenses, achieved by the substitution of high levels of wheat flour with lower levels of less expensive starch. This is possible due to the high moisture, temperature and pressure within extruders, which lead to nearly complete gelatinisation of a wide range of starches.
Extruded feeds utilise relatively high levels of moisture, which can be added in the form of flavors and palatability enhancers such as fish, dried solubles and flavorful enzymatic digests of seafood waste. This offers the potential to produce a new generation of highly palatable shrimp feeds without reliance on expensive marine protein such as squid meal and krill meal.
The rate of swelling of extruded feeds can also be manipulated to deliver feeds of varying ‘softness’. The swelling is a function of starch fragmentation, also known as dextrinisaton, which can be controlled by the degree of shear exerted by the extruder screw.
The 1995 study Physiochemical properties of extruded pelleted shrimp feeds with various wheat flours conducted by GH Ryu and coauthors at Kansas state university in Kansas, USA showed an 89 percent correlation between the extent of starch gelatinisation and the water stability of 10 Asian shrimp feeds. Other studies on conventional single-pelleted feeds for terrestrial animals reported that only about 20 percent of the starch is gelatinised. This explains why typical poultry feed disintegrates in water within minutes of immersion.
In addition, pelleting systems for shrimp feed use advanced manufacturing techniques such as fine grinding of raw materials, multiple steam conditioners, higher moisture levels, pelleting dies with higher compression ratios, post-pelleted conditioning and drying. These techniques increase the starch gelatinisation levels of extruded shrimp feeds to 80 – 95 percent compared with conventional pelleted shrimp feeds.
In a 12-week study in 2000, Albert Tacon and co-workers at the Oceanic Institute in Hawaii, USA compared single feed formulation in pelleted or extruded forms and two different sizes; results reported in February 2003 showed higher shrimp survival and weight gain and greater feed efficiency from extruded feed.
These results are being validated on a commercial scale in Korea, Malaysia and Brazil. Compensation for the vitamin losses thought to be slightly higher in extrusion than in pelleting can be easily accomplished by slight fortification of premixes.
Finally, recent developments in extrusion processing allow the production of sophisticated 100 percent sinking diets with lower cost and better performance than conventional pelleted feeds. Its advantages are expected to become more apparent, since the additional benefits of higher liquid addition, greater control of swelling and greater pasteurisation further contribute to higher performance.
Read the magazine HERE.
The Aquaculturists
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magazine International Aquafeed which is published by Perendale Publishers Ltd
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nice blog !! i was looking for blogs related of animal feed manufacturers . then i found this blog, this is really nice and interested to read. thanks to author for sharing this type of information.
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