Browning is pure poetry with carbon infra-red.

A specially built oven system, incorporating the latest carbon infra-red technology, is helping Geest to achieve perfect browning of the toppings for a range of oven-ready meals produced at its Milton Keynes food factory.

To ensure that the technology for browning toppings matched the state-of-the-art technology of the rest of the new line, Geest contacted specialists Protech Food Systems of Bedford, who designed and installed a complete oven system, incorporating carbon infra-red heater modules, exhaust modules and the relevant control system from Heraeus Noblelight. Crabon infra-red is ideal for applications in the food industry, such as surface browning, as it delivers medium wave infra-red radiation, which is perfectly suited to evaporating water from products, at a very high power density. This ensures that the surface of the food product rapidly achieves a sufficient temperature to drive away any local moisture and then causes browning without heating the body of the product. This allows the subsequent chilling operation to be carried out as energy-efficiently as possible. The new oven features two 40kW carbon medium wave modules and three exhaust cassettes to provide balance to the system. Control is effected in two zones to provide production flexibility. One of the 40kW modules has simple on/off control while the other module, which contains five 8kW emitters has its outer emitters controlled by one thyristor and its three inner emitters separately controlled by another thyristor.

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