'Bending' equipment for food quality and safety
Published
date: 31 July 2008
Source of Article: http://foodbev.com/ArticleDetail.aspx?contentId=1300
By Ed Sullivan
Meat processors such as Butterball
reveal that a cooperative engineering effort and 3D modelling
'bends' the process to the exacting requirements of the final product.
Producers of ready-to-eat meat and poultry are incorporating infrared (IR) food
processing technologies to ensure food safety as well as optimising
colour, taste and cooking efficiencies.
IR pasteurisation equipment is bolstering efforts to
combat the hazards of Listeria and other pathogens on products ranging from
hams and briskets to deli loaves. The use of quick IR surface treatment of such
pre-cooked products can provide a log reduction of three or better. By
combining short, medium and long wave high-response IR emitters, a process can
be fine-tuned to maximise product safety while also
achieving the required surface finish, including colour
and texture of meats as well as topping products such as cheese.
Yet, too often, such equipment is only available "off the shelf" and
isn't readily adaptable to the existing process. As a result, food processors
find that the end product has to adapt to the limitations of the equipment and
this can affect the colour, texture, flavour, processing time, throughput, and safety (along
with other factors).
Fortunately, there is an alternative. Major food processors such as Butterball
are now determined to "bend" the equipment to meet the exacting
safety and food quality needs of the product through a new paradigm:
cooperative engineering and innovative 3D modelling
with the equipment manufacturer to streamline and improve the process.
At Butterball LLC, IR pasteurisation was recently
added to the lines at the
"Although we were primarily interested in the food safety benefits of IR pasteurisation as well as protecting our brand, we also
felt there was an opportunity to optimise the
equipment in terms of human safety and ease of maintenance," says Steve Valesko, Butterball Vice President of Engineering. "We
also sought to incorporate automation features that would monitor equipment
status and notify the operator if the IR pasteuriser
was approaching a need of service."
The trial run – standard equipment
Valesko, a long-time veteran of the industry, says
that although he anticipated the need to customise
the new IR equipment to Butterball's specification, the engineering and production
groups began the move to the new pasteurisation
equipment by trying standard equipment offered by Unitherm
Food Systems (
"They're a major supplier of equipment to our industry, and we were
assured that they would work with us to tailor the new equipment to meet our
requirements," Valesko says, "so we felt
that 'test-driving' the standard equipment would both facilitate and expedite
that process."
Unitherm is recognised for
its abilities to meet regulatory as well as engineering requirements, and its
capabilities in customising equipment. The firm
describes this as 'bending' the design of its cooking and chilling equipment to
ensure an optimum fit with the advanced features wanted on the production lines
of many of the food industry's biggest players.
"There's a tremendous need in the food processing industry to have access
to customised
equipment," explains David Howard, Unitherm CEO.
"For instance, there is certainly a selection of standard IR equipment
available, but in order to get the results needed for food preparation safety
and other features, it's usually a good idea to engineer the equipment to best
fit the customer's needs and provide the highest quality and yield of
products."
"That demands a cooperative engineering effort where feedback can be
turned into appropriate and beneficial design modifications that meet the needs
of the end product," adds Howard.
"We ran the initial equipment for about a month," Valesko
says. "Although it was quite evident that we would need to make
alterations to our final IR pasteurisation equipment
design, that trial period with the off-the-shelf equipment was highly
beneficial. It permitted us to see the equipment in action and redesign it with
Unitherm to meet the needs of both our process and
our products."
The preliminary trials, held at Butterball's
"Our basic concern was to ensure the wholesomeness of our product," Valesko says, "which entailed the necessary protection
of our deli products prior to sealing in the bag."
He adds that some of Butterball's deli customers, including major supermarket
chains, have begun to request IR pasteurisation as an
assurance of safety for the meat and poultry products that they slice and sell.
3D for validation and further improvement
After the trial run, Butterball engineers and process
people decided on several upgrades for the IR pasteurising
equipment, either to meet their food safety goals or to better integrate with
the process.
"What we didn't want was to change the way the equipment operated," Valesko explains. "Yet, there were specific
alterations that we knew would make the system much better for our
operations."
Most of the alterations Butterball requested were aimed at improving human
safety and ease of maintenance. They specified a change in the way the
equipment hood opens and closes, so that it's more user
friendly. The outside of trial pasteuriser would get
hot, so Butterball stipulated that it be made cool to the touch. The Butterball
project team also requested that the belt could be cleaned more easily.
The key to making those changes was the collaborative effort between the
equipment design engineers along with Butterball's engineers and process
managers. Among the most noteworthy tools to facilitate that collaboration was
a 3D modelling program that Unitherm
uses so that every nut and bolt of a system can be portrayed, reviewed and
approved (or further modified).
"The 3D modelling was one of the beautiful parts
of this project," Valesko explains. "It
allowed us to see exactly what the machine was going to look like. And from
highly detailed 3D images, we were able to make further alterations, including
structural changes to the frame of the machine."
Valesko adds that the 3D illustrations helped Unitherm to cooperate fully in adapting or bending its
equipment design to meet Butterball's production and quality requirements.
"We worked very well together on the project," he says. Now, we feel
assured that the equipment has been designed to accomplish what we've set out
to do."
He says that although Butterball was responsible for the redesign of the IR pasteurisation system, nothing about the final concept is
considered proprietary.
"The improvements that we made had to do with food safety and human safety
issues. Those are concerns that are shared by the entire industry," Valesko says. "So, for the betterment of the industry,
we're willing to share information about our own improvements in those
areas."
3D design helps IR cook
Other IR-based cooking applications, gas infrared ovens, also benefit from the
highly interactive process of 3D design.
Replacing the popular impingement and spiral ovens, gas IR is quickly becoming
the gold standard of control of colour, shape and
moisture of ready-to-eat foods such as the breakfast sausages served by fast
food restaurants.
Lopez Foods, which supplies breakfast sausages to McDonald's, decided in 2007
to upgrade its seven sausage lines to improve efficiency and save on energy
while ensuring product quality.
By using 3D modelling, Unitherm
was able to work hand in hand with the food producer and refine the design to
eliminate daily operational concerns that affected the lines.
"We redesigned the extraction hood system to reduce cleaning time by
84%," explains David Howard, Unitherm CEO.
"With our customer's input, we designed the water flow system and transfer
decks to eliminate charring on the stainless steel surfaces. This also reduced
cleaning time. But the biggest obstacle was developing a new emitter that had
no reliance on ceramics."
As a measure of the 3D modelling approach, as well as
a commitment to innovation, Unitherm developed a cast
burner head featuring a stainless steel sponge material that could be used to
create the infrared emitter.
"The success of this head took the fragility out of the line, making it
1,000-fold more reliable," Howard says.
Howard adds that, until recently, equipment manufacturers were putting 2D
drawings in front of their customers' engineers. Because those drawings were
flat and a challenge to read, it was difficult to visualise
what the finished equipment was really going to look like.
"The 3D model shows engineers and other members of a development team a
fully designed piece of equipment that they can interact with," Howard
says. "This enables them to become part of the process, and the
functionality enables them to provide us with an end-user point of view.
Although we're experts at developing equipment and systems, there may be some
aspects of equipment design that can be improved by the user; the personnel who
work with the machine every day."
Ed Sullivan is a technical writer based in Hermosa Beach, California
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