A spiral freezer is a piece of equipment used to rapidly freeze or chill products, such as meats and seafood. Its design allows it to move a large volume of food quickly and efficiently, which helps maximize production output. Spiral freezers also come with a variety of temperature settings, which can be changed to accommodate different processing needs. For example, pre-freezing and freezing temperatures are often used to prepare foods for storage or transportation, while chilling is best suited for long-term storage.
As a result, spiral freezers can be used in a wide range of applications and industries. However, they are especially popular in the food processing industry. This is because they are fast, hygienic, and cost-effective. Unlike tunnel freezers, which require a lengthy linear wire-mesh belt to convey products through a sub-zero blast-freezing room, spiral freezers use self-stacking, multi-tiered conveyors to minimize floor space requirements. These units are ideal for situations where space is limited, such as in plant warehouses and processing facilities.
One of the key factors in determining how much energy a spiral freezer will consume is its temperature setting. Specifically, the difference between the evaporator temperature and air inlet temperatures determines how much energy is needed to cool the unit. As such, it’s important to understand the differences between different spiral freezers in order to choose the right one for your operation.
For example, if you choose to use an industrial spiral freezer with a higher evaporator temperature, it will be less efficient than a lower-temperature model. The reason for this is because the higher evaporator temperature will cause the product to lose more water weight during the freezing process. In turn, this can increase energy consumption.
Another way that spiral freezers can be more efficient is by utilizing advanced monitoring and control technologies. For instance, a customer using a Linde CRYOLINE UPS ultra performance PLUS spiral freezer found that they could save a significant amount of energy by installing additional sensors in the machine to monitor belt speed, temperature, air flow, and vibrations. This information was then transmitted to the control room, where it helped reduce unnecessary defrost cycles, which can result in wasted energy and costly downtime.
In addition, by adding sensors to the system, the company was able to identify and correct problems that were causing unnecessary waste. For example, the sensors detected that some of the freezers were not being fully utilized throughout the day. As a result, they were running defrost cycles at an excessive rate.
This helped the company increase productivity, decrease energy costs, and improve quality. Additionally, the sensor data was able to be shared with the Quality Assurance department, which reduced manual record keeping and saved labor hours. The company has since taken this solution to other plants and is currently evaluating the benefits of implementing these advanced controls in its spiral freezers. By deploying these technologies, the company has been able to achieve an average of 20% energy savings in its freezers, with the potential for even greater savings.