Riverside Bakery Dehumidification System Increases Efficiency in Freezer Production
- Increased Production Capacity
- Greatly Reduced Maintenance and Defrost Cycles
- Energy Savings Through Quicker Cooling After Washdown
- Lucrative Payback
Riverside Bakery are a leading manufacturer of high-quality chilled quiche products supplying premium supermarkets such as Mark’s and Spencer’s and Sainsbury’s. Their Nottingham production line encompasses a process conveyor spiral freezer system in which freezes the product prior to packaging.
The biggest cause for interruption in process freezing is the constant necessity to defrost in order to deal with ice accumulation on equipment and surfaces. As air gets cooler, the amount of moisture in which it can hold reduces; thus, when humid air is cooled, there comes a point in which the air can no longer hold the moisture it contains and rejects it in the form of condensation. Humidity occurs within a spiral freezer through infiltration via the apertures as well as moisture released by the product itself. When this moisture condenses, ice / frost is formed.
The rate of frost accumulation within the freezer was causing production to stop every 36 hours. During these stops the freezer had to be defrosted, washed down, fully dried and then brought all the way back to the operating temperature (-13⁰C); a five-hour process.
Maintaining quality and productivity is paramount in food production and a reduction in the persistence in which you need to defrost is the surest route to significant productivity gains on a process freezing production line.
The solution was to install 2 No. Munters IceDry® Dehumidification Units (See Fig 1.). The units provide an efficient and low-cost method of dehumidification by passing a mixture of ambient and recirculated air over a slowly revolving rotor coated with a desiccant material which removes moisture from the air via absorption. This system is then able to pick up moisture from both the product and infiltration thus significantly extending the time production can run between defrosts.
