Spiral Freezer Optimization
A spiral freezer mechanically transports food on a continuous conveyor belt through a tightly controlled cooling process to quickly decrease the product temperature before transportation or refrigerated storage. It’s designed to efficiently expose a larger volume of products to the freezing process for a shorter time than conventional freezers, saving both space and energy.
Spiral freezers are highly versatile and can be used in a variety of applications, including meat and poultry, seafood, bakery airy products, fresh salads, and ready meals. These freezers are ideal for facilities with limited floor space and production line demands for fast, uniform freezing.
However, a number of issues can affect the performance and efficiency of a spiral freezer. For example, if a plant changes over to a different product that requires a different box temperature, and the freezer’s evaporator temperature setpoint is not updated accordingly, it can result in warm (or soft) product that does not pass quality checks, leading to lost product. The resulting workflow issues also pull resources from other plant responsibilities, negatively impacting productivity.
In addition, if a freezer is underused throughout the day, unused heat from the evaporator coils will build up on the product, forcing the product to undergo a defrost cycle which increases both operating costs and wasted energy. Furthermore, excessive air infiltration at the infeed and outfeed of the freezer contributes to higher than desired energy intensity.
Veregy has a proven track record of working with clients to optimize their spiral freezers, significantly reducing their energy consumption and operating costs. This is accomplished by identifying and addressing the issues above, as well as determining the best refrigeration system configuration and design to suit each application.
Whether you are looking for an off-the-shelf solution or a custom site built IQF spiral freezer, our experienced team can help. We will work with you to determine the optimal operating parameters for your specific product mix, then provide the data and analysis needed to improve your freezer’s performance. We will test a range of temperatures, and recommend changes to your evaporator temperature setpoint to minimize product loss and maximize equipment operation to save energy.
Providing a wide variety of technical services and gas-based technologies for the metals industry, from on-site plants to delivery of liquid products by tanker truck to specialty gases for brazing, annealing, oxy-fuel combustion, inert gas blanketing, welding and cryogenic treating. We offer a complete range of nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and argon supply solutions from bulk, bagged and packaged to cylinders, with state-of-the-art delivery systems.