Therefore, for higher capacities 3.5 to 5 tons raw feathers per hour and up continuous hydrolyzers were introduced, with typical sizes 5.0, 7.5, 10.0 and 15.0 tons input per hour.

The feathers are fed into a single screw press that compresses the feathers to a pressure tight “plug” that is channeled into a processing body which is filled with steam under a set pressure of 3 bar. The processing body is a long, heated cylinder with a rotor with mounted paddles that mixes, disintegrates and pushes the feathers forward to reach a set processing time of about 20 minutes.

The hydrolyzed feathers turn into a porridge state and is fed out through a pipe with 2 knife gate valves that open and close in sequence, and the material is then piped into a fairly large disc dryer for final drying.
Once set up, the continuous hydrolyzer is fully automated and can run unattended or partly attended for as long as raw material is available.