Importance

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Abstract

Apparatus is disclosed for cooling large sealed drums (typically fifty-five gallon drums) of cooked food products. The size of such large drums makes them difficult to handle, since they typically weigh in excess of five hundred pounds when full. The cooling apparatus comprises a main frame structure which has a support shaft rotatably attached to it and elevated above the base of the frame a distance sufficient to provide clearance for a vertically oriented drum to pass underneath it. The support shaft has a support frame on it with six, equally spaced, radially arranged, drum support platforms and clamp members attached to it. A drum is rolled onto one of these platforms from an adjacent fixed platform. Once it is in place, it is clamped onto the support frame, and the next support platform is rotated into place. Once drums are located in all six of the positions, the device is continuously rotated in a cooling water spray to rapidly cool the contents of the drums. The rotation causes a tumbling action of the contents to ensure a mixing of the contents to bring all of the contents into contact with the inner surface of the drum during the cooling operation, so that cooling is rapidly and effectively accomplished.

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First Claim