Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line

Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line

Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line is a fully automated food-grade manufacturing system specially designed for producing high-purity red onion powder, which takes retaining flavor, controlling moisture and ensuring hygiene as the core goals, integrates a complete five-step automated closed-loop process from fresh red onions to fine powder, and incorporates various machines such as charger, grinding machine and Electric Grinder to realize full-process automation from raw material pretreatment, slicing, pre-drying, deep drying to ultra-fine crushing, classification and intelligent packaging, widely used in food, spice, Medicine and other fields, ensuring efficient, stable and safe production of high-quality red onion powder, and its core equipment is mostly made of stainless steel to meet strict food safety standards and GMP clean production requirements.

Basic Definition and Core Goals of Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line

First of all, it is necessary to clearly clarify that red onion powder is a common natural spice and food additive, which is made of fresh red onions through physical processing such as cleaning, peeling, slicing, drying and crushing, retaining the unique flavor, color and nutritional components (such as quercetin) of red onions, and is widely used in seasonings, sauces, instant foods, meat products and even pharmaceutical and health products. Unlike chemical powder production lines that rely on chemical synthesis, the Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line adopts a physical processing route of “physical cleaning + low-temperature drying + fine crushing”, which is highly dependent on a food-grade clean environment and precise temperature control to avoid flavor loss and product pollution. The Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line is a complete automated production system, which is mainly composed of raw material pretreatment system, slicing and pre-drying system, deep drying system, ultra-fine crushing and classification system, automatic packaging system, intelligent control system, and auxiliary equipment such as charger, conveyor belt, storage bin and coarse crusher. The charger is an essential auxiliary equipment of the production line, which is used to supply stable power to all electrical equipment such as Electric Grinder, cutting and peeling machine, drying machine, crusher, classifier, packaging machine, control system and dust collector grinder; especially for high-power equipment such as 500KG Grinder, airflow pulverizer, high-speed flash dryer and large automatic packaging line, the charger needs to provide sufficient and stable power to avoid equipment failure caused by insufficient power and ensure the continuous and stable operation of the whole production line. As a food-grade production line, it needs a variety of grinding machines and crushers that meet food safety standards to complete the processing of raw materials and finished products, such as herb grinder, Industrial Weed Grinder, small grinder machine, cryogenic grinding machine, Dry Fruit Powder Grinder Machine, dry ginger grinding machine, licorice grinding machine, black pepper grinder, Air cooled crusher, cassava grinding machine, 500KG Grinder, 200KG grinder, universal grinder, airflow pulverizer, Dust Grinder, Hammer Mill, Ultrafine Grinder, vibrating pulverizer, turbo grinder, dust collector grinder, Vacuum Mill, Electric Grinder and Dry Grinder. These grinding machines have different application scenarios in the production line: small grinder machine is suitable for small-scale production or laboratory use, and can be used to grind small batches of red onions or mixed spices such as black pepper, sugar and salt (using black pepper grinder); 200KG grinder and 500KG Grinder are suitable for medium and large-scale food processing enterprises, and are widely used in the crushing link of red onion powder, which can grind 200KG and 500KG of dried red onion slices per hour respectively, meeting the needs of large-batch production; Air cooled crusher, Hammer Mill and Dry Grinder are mainly used for the preliminary crushing of dried red onion slices, with high efficiency and no pollution, ensuring food safety; airflow pulverizer (such as LHC series), Ultrafine Grinder, turbo grinder and Vacuum Mill are used for the ultra-fine crushing and classification of red onion powder, which can realize zero temperature rise crushing, avoid the degradation of heat-sensitive components such as quercetin, and ensure the flavor and nutritional value of the product; cryogenic grinding machine is used when producing high-end red onion powder for health products or baby food, which can better retain volatile flavor substances and nutritional components, similar to its application in other high-end food powder production. All core equipment in the production line is made of stainless steel, which has the advantages of corrosion resistance, wear resistance, easy cleaning, non-toxicity and no pollution, and can meet the strict requirements of food-grade production: the equipment in direct contact with red onions (such as cutting and peeling machine, drying machine, crusher, packaging machine) is made of 304 stainless steel, which can avoid material pollution caused by equipment corrosion; some key grinding equipment such as CE Certificate grinder also ensures that the production process meets international food safety standards and can be used safely and reliably. In addition, the production line can also be equipped with cutting type crusher and coarse crusher to pre-process raw materials: for fresh red onions with uneven sizes, the coarse crusher can crush them into small pieces suitable for slicing; for auxiliary materials such as Peanut, Seasam, bean, seeds, mushroom and bone, the cutting type crusher can cut them into small pieces convenient for grinding when the production line is adjusted to process composite spices. After simple adjustment and cleaning of equipment, the production line can also be used to process other food powder materials, such as grinding rice into rice flour, coffee into coffee powder, corn and wheat into flour, tea into tea powder, tobacco into tobacco powder, and even mixing red onion powder with other spices (such as black pepper, dry ginger, licorice) using herb grinder, dry ginger grinding machine and licorice grinding machine to produce composite seasonings, which greatly expands the application scope of the production line.

Detailed Production Process of Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line

The production process of Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line is scientific, rigorous and continuous, adhering to the core goals of retaining flavor, controlling moisture and ensuring hygiene, and adopts a five-step automated closed-loop process from fresh red onions to high-purity powder: raw material pretreatment, slicing and pre-drying, deep drying, ultra-fine crushing and classification, and automatic packaging. Each link is closely connected, and the parameters are strictly controlled by the intelligent system to ensure the quality, flavor, moisture content and particle size uniformity of red onion powder products. The following will fully expand each link, combining the core equipment and technical parameters provided in the material to ensure that the content is detailed and in line with food industrial actual conditions. The first major link is raw material pretreatment, which is the foundation of ensuring product hygiene and quality, mainly including cleaning, cutting roots, peeling and sorting. The fresh red onion raw materials are first transported to the automatic onion root cutting and peeling assembly line through the conveyor belt, which can automatically remove the roots, outer skins and impurities of red onions, realize non-destructive cleaning and sorting, and minimize manual contact to avoid secondary pollution. The key technical parameters of this link are: processing capacity of 300–800 kg/h, cleaning water pressure of 0.2–0.4 MPa, and peeling rate of ≥98%; the core equipment is the YG-800 root cutting and peeling machine produced by Zhucheng Dayang Machinery, which is made of 304 stainless steel, easy to clean and corrosion-resistant. After root cutting and peeling, the red onions are sent to the cleaning tank for secondary cleaning, using high-pressure water flow to wash the surface dirt and residual outer skin, and then sent to the drying machine for surface dehydration, ensuring that the surface of the red onions is dry and free of water stains, which is convenient for subsequent slicing and drying. During the pretreatment process, metal detectors are also installed to detect and remove metal impurities mixed in the red onions, avoiding damage to subsequent equipment and ensuring product safety. The second major link is slicing and pre-drying; the cleaned red onions are sent to the automatic slicer through the conveyor belt, which cuts the red onions into thin slices with a thickness of 2–4mm, ensuring uniform thickness and facilitating subsequent drying. The sliced red onion slices are sent to the multi-layer mesh belt type hot air dryer for preliminary dehydration, and the hot air temperature gradient is controlled at 60→70→80℃, the drying time is 40–60 minutes, and the wind speed is 1.5–2.5 m/s, which can reduce the water content of the red onion slices to 40–50%. The multi-layer mesh belt type hot air dryer produced by Changzhou Kaiquan Drying Equipment has a temperature control range of 40–100℃ and an air volume of 8000–15000 m³/h, which can realize uniform drying of red onion slices, avoid local overheating and coking, and retain part of the flavor. The pre-drying link can effectively reduce the load of the subsequent deep drying link, shorten the total drying time, and improve production efficiency. The third major link is deep drying, which is the key link to retain the flavor of red onion powder and control the moisture content; the pre-dried red onion slices are sent to the flash dryer (or low-temperature spray drying tower) through the conveyor belt for instantaneous high-temperature dehydration. The core equipment is the LPG-100 type flash dryer produced by Changzhou Zhousheng Drying Engineering, with an inlet air temperature of 180–200℃, an outlet air temperature of 85–95℃, a drying time of only 2–5 seconds, and the final moisture content of the dried red onion slices is controlled below 8% (the enterprise internal control standard is ≤6%). Compared with the traditional drum drying, the flash drying can shorten the drying time by 90% and increase the flavor retention rate by more than 40%, because the instantaneous high-temperature drying can quickly evaporate the moisture in the red onion slices, while minimizing the volatilization of volatile sulfides and flavonoids, avoiding coking and degradation of heat-sensitive components. The flash dryer is equipped with a dust collector grinder and a negative pressure dust suction device to collect the dust generated during the drying process in time, avoid environmental pollution and material waste, and the dust concentration is controlled below 10 mg/m³, meeting the GB 16297–2021 standard. The fourth major link is ultra-fine crushing and classification; the deeply dried red onion slices (water content ≤8%) are sent to the LHC series airflow pulverizer through the conveyor belt for ultra-fine crushing, and then sent to the dynamic classifier for precise classification. The airflow pulverizer uses high-speed airflow collision to crush the red onion slices, realizing blade-free and metal-pollution-free ultra-fine powder, and the crushing process is zero temperature rise, which can effectively avoid the degradation of heat-sensitive components such as quercetin. The key technical parameters of this link are: crushing particle size D90≤125μm (120 mesh), classification accuracy ±5μm, and discharge temperature ≤40℃; the core equipment is the LHC-200 airflow pulverizer produced by Shandong Jietemu and Sichuan Juzi, with a crushing fineness of 100–200 mesh and a compressed air pressure of 0.6–0.8 MPa. For red onion powder with more than 120 meshes, food-grade silicon dioxide (≤0.5%) needs to be added as an anti-caking agent to improve the fluidity of the powder and avoid agglomeration. The unqualified coarse particles after classification are automatically returned to the airflow pulverizer for cyclic crushing, ensuring the particle size uniformity of the finished product. The fifth major link is automatic packaging; the qualified red onion powder after classification is sent to the XH-LA2 full-automatic powder filling and packaging line through the conveyor belt, which can complete metering (10–500g), heat sealing, coding and cartoning, and support 10 groups of formula storage. The key technical parameters of the packaging line are: packaging accuracy ±0.5%–1%, production capacity 30–60 bags per minute, made of 304 stainless steel with a fully sealed design, which can avoid powder moisture absorption and pollution. The core equipment is the XH-LA2 series automatic packaging machine produced by Guangzhou Maichi, Hefei Maichi and Wuxi Liyuan, with a metering range of 1–500g, a sealing temperature of 120–180℃ and a coding speed of 128m/min. The packaging line is connected with the ERP system, which can realize intelligent management of packaging data, such as recording packaging quantity, specifications and production time, facilitating enterprise production management and quality traceability. In the entire production process, the intelligent control system plays a leading role; the system adopts PLC+touch screen man-machine interface, which can realize automatic adjustment of full-process parameters, such as cleaning water pressure, slicing thickness, drying temperature, crushing particle size and packaging weight, and all parameters can be set, stored and called. The system supports remote operation and maintenance and fault diagnosis, which can timely remind the operator of equipment faults (such as insufficient power of the charger, blockage of the airflow pulverizer, abnormal temperature of the flash dryer) and fault causes, helping to quickly eliminate faults and ensure the stable operation of the production line. At the same time, the whole production process adopts negative pressure closed conveying, which can completely avoid powder leakage and dust pollution, ensuring the cleanliness of the production environment and the health of operators.

Key Equipment, Technical Parameters and Food Safety Certification

The Automatic Red Onion Powder Production Line has advanced core equipment and strict technical parameters, and as a food-grade production line, it must meet strict product standards and food safety certification to ensure the quality and safety of red onion powder. The following will fully expand the key equipment, technical parameters and food safety certification of the production line, combining the material content to ensure that the content is detailed and accurate. First, the key equipment and technical parameters of the production line; according to different process links, the core equipment of the production line is mainly divided into raw material pretreatment equipment, drying equipment, crushing and classification equipment, and packaging equipment, each of which has clear technical parameters to ensure the stability of the production process and the quality of products. The first category is raw material pretreatment equipment, the representative equipment is the automatic onion root cutting and peeling machine (model YG-800 produced by Zhucheng Dayang Machinery), with a processing capacity of 600kg/h, a power of 3.7kW, and made of 304 stainless steel, which can realize automatic root cutting, peeling and cleaning, with a peeling rate of ≥98%. In addition, the auxiliary equipment includes a coarse crusher, a cutting type crusher and a metal detector, which are used for pre-processing raw materials and removing impurities. The second category is drying equipment, which includes multi-layer mesh belt type hot air dryer and flash dryer. The multi-layer mesh belt type hot air dryer has a temperature control range of 40–100℃, an air volume of 8000–15000 m³/h, and a drying time of 40–60 minutes, which is used for pre-drying red onion slices; the flash dryer (model LPG-100) has an inlet air temperature of 200℃, an outlet air temperature of 90℃, and a processing capacity of 100kg/h, which is used for deep drying of red onion slices, with a drying time of only 2–5 seconds, ensuring flavor retention. The third category is crushing and classification equipment, the representative equipment is the LHC-200 airflow pulverizer and dynamic classifier. The airflow pulverizer has a crushing fineness of 100–200 mesh, a compressed air pressure of 0.6–0.8 MPa, and a discharge temperature ≤40℃, realizing zero temperature rise crushing; the dynamic classifier has a classification accuracy of ±5μm, which can accurately control the particle size of the finished product. In addition, other grinding equipment such as 500KG Grinder, 200KG grinder, universal grinder, Dry Grinder and dust collector grinder can also be used according to production needs, and some key equipment such as CE Certificate grinder also meets international standards. The fourth category is packaging equipment, the representative equipment is the XH-LA2 series automatic powder filling and packaging line, with a metering range of 1–500g, a packaging accuracy of ±0.5%–1%, a production capacity of 30–60 bags per minute, a sealing temperature of 120–180℃, and a coding speed of 128m/min, made of 304 stainless steel with a fully sealed design, which can meet the packaging needs of different specifications. In addition, the production line is also equipped with auxiliary equipment such as charger, conveyor belt, storage bin and pulse dust collector, all of which have strict technical parameters to ensure the stable operation of the whole production line. Secondly, the product standards and food safety certification of red onion powder; as a food additive and spice, red onion powder must meet strict national standards and enterprise internal control standards, and pass relevant food safety certification to ensure edible safety. The specific product standards are as follows: in terms of moisture content, the enterprise internal control standard is ≤6%, and the detection basis is GB 5009.3–2016; in terms of particle size distribution, D90 ≤125μm (120 mesh) and D50 ≈40–60μm, and the detection basis is GB/T 19077–2016; in terms of microbial indicators, the total number of bacteria ≤5000 CFU/g, coliform bacteria ≤30 MPN/100g, and pathogenic bacteria (Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus) shall not be detected, and the detection basis is GB 4789.2–2022 and GB 4789.5–2012; in terms of heavy metals, lead (Pb) ≤2 mg/kg and arsenic (As) ≤1 mg/kg, and the detection basis is GB 5009.12–2017 and GB 5009.11–2014. In terms of food safety certification, the production line must pass HACCP, ISO 22000, SC food production license, and halal certification (optional), in accordance with the Measures for the Administration of Food Production Licenses and ISO 22000:2018 standards. In addition, there is an industry consensus: high-end red onion powder adopts a non-irradiation process to avoid flavor loss caused by irradiation; for fine powder with more than 120 meshes, food-grade silicon dioxide (≤0.5%) needs to be added as an anti-caking agent to improve the fluidity of the powder and avoid agglomeration during storage and transportation.

Industry Suppliers, Technical Bottlenecks and Future Development Directions

The automatic red onion powder production industry has formed a mature industrial chain, with a number of mainstream equipment suppliers and whole-line integrators, providing comprehensive technical support and services for enterprises. However, there are still some technical bottlenecks restricting the high-quality development of the industry, and the future development direction is mainly focused on flavor retention, intelligent upgrading and energy conservation and environmental protection. The following will fully expand the industry suppliers, technical bottlenecks and future development directions, combining the material content to ensure that the content is detailed and in line with the actual situation. First, the mainstream equipment suppliers and whole-line integrators in the industry; there are many professional equipment suppliers in the domestic market, each with its own technical advantages and service scope, providing one-stop solutions for the construction of automatic red onion powder production lines. Zhucheng Dayang Machinery in Weifang, Shandong focuses on the whole line of vegetable processing, providing an integrated solution of “root cutting → peeling → drying → crushing → packaging”, and can customize production lines with a capacity of 300–2000kg/h. Changzhou Kaiquan Drying Equipment in Changzhou, Jiangsu is good at hot air and flash drying systems, with corrosion-resistant and easy-to-clean equipment, and provides GMP-level clean workshop design services. Guangzhou Maichi Packaging Equipment in Guangzhou, Guangdong is leading in the powder packaging system, with a metering accuracy of ±0.3%, supporting ERP docking, and specializing in the automatic packaging of condiment powder and spices. Hefei Maichi Intelligent Equipment in Hefei, Anhui adopts modular design, supports rapid mold change, and has a daily output of up to 4.8 tons, which is suitable for composite condiments containing particles. Wuxi Liyuan Intelligent Technology in Wuxi, Jiangsu has an intelligent batching system and a closed-loop powder conveying system with an error of ≤±0.5%, providing a full-stack service of “equipment + software + data platform”. These suppliers and integrators have promoted the intelligence, automation and standardization of the automatic red onion powder production line. Secondly, the current technical bottlenecks of the production line; although the automatic red onion powder production line has developed maturely, there are still three main technical bottlenecks restricting the industry’s development: the first is flavor retention, high-temperature drying (even flash drying) still leads to the volatilization of some volatile sulfides, affecting the flavor reduction degree of red onion powder after rehydration, which is a key problem to be solved for high-end products; the second is particle size control, ultra-fine red onion powder (<50μm) is easy to agglomerate, and surface modification technology must be relied on to improve its dispersibility, which will increase production costs and restrict the popularization of ultra-fine red onion powder; the third is raw material dependence, high-quality red onions are concentrated in specific producing areas, and the seasonal fluctuation of raw material supply is large, which affects the stable production of the production line and the consistency of product quality. Thirdly, the future development direction of the production line; aiming at the current technical bottlenecks, combined with the development trends of food industry intelligence, greenization and high-endization, the future development direction of the automatic red onion powder production line is clear: the first is freeze-drying (FD) upgrading, exploring low-temperature vacuum drying technology to realize “freeze-drying-like” flavor retention, which is suitable for high-end health products and baby supplementary food, and can maximize the retention of volatile flavor substances and nutritional components of red onions; the second is AI visual sorting, deploying deep learning algorithms to automatically identify the color, impurities and thickness of red onion slices, remove unqualified slices, and improve the consistency of raw materials and the quality stability of finished products; the third is carbon footprint optimization, adopting solar hot air preheating and waste heat recovery systems to recover the waste heat generated in the drying link and reuse it for pre-drying and other links, reducing the energy consumption per unit product by more than 30%, responding to the national “double carbon” strategy and realizing green production; the fourth is instant dissolving technology, developing “instant red onion powder” through microencapsulation embedding of flavor substances, which can be quickly dissolved in water, suitable for instant scenarios such as soups and sauces, expanding the application scope of red onion powder products. In addition, the future production line will also develop towards modularization and flexibility, realizing rapid switching between different product specifications and even different food powder products (such as switching from red onion powder to garlic powder, ginger powder), improving the utilization rate of equipment; at the same time, strengthening the research and development of low-cost surface modification technology to solve the agglomeration problem of ultra-fine powder and reduce production costs. With the continuous improvement of people’s living standards and the increasing demand for natural, healthy and convenient food additives, the market demand for high-quality red onion powder will continue to grow, and the automatic red onion powder production line will have a broader development prospect in the future. It can not only help food processing enterprises improve production efficiency, reduce production costs, ensure product quality and safety, but also promote the deep processing of red onion industry, extend the industrial chain, and create greater economic and social benefits.