Facilitating Safer Food Production with Air-to-Air Heat Exchangers
From raw ingredients to food packaging, there are myriad stringent processes and technologies in place throughout every step of the food production industry to make sure that the foods and drinks we consume every day are safe. As food industry professionals, it is our responsibility to ensure that we are always incorporating the best possible methods to improve the safety and quality of our products – after all, foods and beverages are quite literally a life or death matter.
Food Industry Needs for Temperature Regulation
Food production facilities often require precise temperature control over long periods of time. Specific temperatures are needed to be reached and maintained for vital processes like pasteurization, refrigeration, freezing, and sterilization – just to name a few. And these can all change based on the specific ingredients used.
Case in point: the FDA’s frequently updated Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 lays out a detailed account – nearly 1,800 words as of August 2024 – of demands and best practices for temperature controls at food processing facilities to prevent dangerous outcomes like microorganisms.
Air-to-air heat exchangers are a proven effective and reliable source for temperature control in food processing. Heat recovery units recapture the waste air that is emitted during food processing and reuse it in other parts of the process to maintain those precise temperature requirements.
The Air-to-Air Difference
Heat is one of the greatest sources of wasted energy in manufacturing. Typically, this heated air is vented out into the surrounding environment. Air-to-air heat recovery providers see this waste air as an opportunity, not a mere byproduct. Air-to-air heat exchanger units recapture and recycle air that would have gone to waste, delivering an efficient and economical solution for manufacturers.
There are a number of types of air-to-air heat recovery units to best fit the needs of various food production facilities.
The most commonly used style of heat recovery system in food processing is called dimpled plate (DPL) heat exchanger. The DPL is a versatile, rugged, heavy-duty, and easily cleanable plate heat exchanger. Its dimpled design ensures consistent plate spacing and enhanced turbulence while maintaining low-pressure drops. The all-welded construction prevents cross-contamination between gas streams. Variable plate thickness, plate spacing, plate sizes, and air-flow patterns are designed to meet system requirements and fine-tune the system to maximize efficiency and cost savings. DPLs are most commonly used across the food processing industry in areas like bakery oven pre-heaters, indirect heating of sterilized air used for bottle drying at bottling plants, indirect heating of grain dryers, and pre-heating air for batch ovens.
Another style of air-to-air unit frequently utilized in the food industry is the vertical shell & tube heat exchanger. Cooling towers contain large tube diameters designed to cool air streams that have large amounts of particles. These towers help air control equipment to function more efficiently, and they recover heat that can be reused as building make-up air. This is a great system for facilities that use ovens, dryers, kiln cupolas, and incinerators with particulate exhaust emissions that need to be cooled or dried out before going into a more stringent, temperature-sensitive, particulate collection device. In food manufacturing, cooling towers are often used in conjunction with food dryers and feed dryers.
For food processors that demand the most heavy duty option, the shell & tube heat exchanger is the solution. This style of heat exchanger is designed for high temperatures and very dirty exhaust streams. It is ideal as a primary and secondary heat exchanger for various volatile organic compound abatement and fume incineration methods, including catalytic, thermal recuperative, and thermal regenerative incinerators.
PRE-heat Air-to-Air Innovation
Start your food processing industrial air innovation journey with PRE-heat. PRE-heat has been providing the highest quality air-to-air heat recovery units for over 40 years. Our knowledge of the industry has driven us to where we are today, creating improved shell and tube designs and improved plate designs all in-house.
See our food processing industry work in action in this case study for Marriott Walker Corporation, a powdered egg producer. We worked with Marriott Walker to design and deliver a custom plate heat exchanger that caused minimal disturbance to their process and used all of their existing process equipment to minimize costs.
Are you interested in learning more about air-to-air heat exchangers, but you’re not sure how they can work for your Read more
- Published in Applications
How Heat Exchangers Can Work for Your Business
Are you interested in learning more about air-to-air heat exchangers, but you’re not sure how they can work for your business? PRE-heat is here to help. In this blog, we’ll highlight the broad range of industries we work with most frequently. This way, you can more easily envision how PRE-heat air-to-air heat exchangers can fit into your facility.
Air Pollution
Air pollution is an output in nearly every manufacturing industry. In a world where more and more customers and government regulations are demanding greener practices, incorporating a heat exchanger is an easy switch to make.
Heat exchangers promote efficiency by reusing air emitted during manufacturing and repurposing it in other areas in the manufacturing process. More air is being used within your facility, and less is going out into the environment. If your business incorporates thermal oxidizers, catalytic oxidizers, selective catalytic reduction concentrator systems, or RTO secondary waste heat recovery, a heat exchanger is a must.
To see an example of PRE-heat’s work in limiting air pollution, check out our case study in which we worked with an artificial leather producer to enhance their pollution control system with a heat recovery unit containing a regenerative thermal oxidizer.
Food Production
Food production facilities demand strict temperature requirements to ensure that food products are not compromised. We have years of experience developing preheaters for dairy and supplement spray dryers, ovens, rotary dryers and many other drying and baking applications.
Preheaters are also a cost-effective solution for food producers. Our technologies can regulate emissions economically and efficiently, ensuring compliance with permit regulations.
Want to see our work in action? Read our case study featuring powdered egg producer Marriott Walker Corporation. We worked together to design and install a heat exchanger in their facility, all while causing minimal disturbance to their process and using all existing equipment. The result? Marriott Walker saved an average of 10% on fuel costs, or $133,056 in the first year after installing their PRE-heat heat exchanger.
Metals and Surface Finishing
Properly applying heat is crucial in the metals manufacturing and finishing industry. Heat exchangers give manufacturers more control over the air temperatures in their facility without breaking the bank on energy costs – in fact, you’ll save money with PRE-heat.
Our heat exchangers can also cool airstreams to suit your unique projects and metal materials. We can optimize your system to the specifications your process requires.
To see our work in use at a metal manufacturing facility, take a look at our case study. We designed a custom heat exchanger system wherein one heat exchanger captures the excess heat from the thermal fume incinerator for reuse, and another heat exchanger later cools the exhaust airstream to ensure optimal performance of the baghouse filtration system. Our client not only achieved substantial energy savings but also enhanced their operational efficiency.
Building Materials
Many machines in the building materials industry, like gypsum board dryers, carpet and floor tile dryers, and lumber dryers, emit significant amounts of heat. Don’t let that heated air go to waste – PRE-heat’s air-to-air heat exchangers can capture and reuse that air elsewhere in the building materials manufacturing process, thereby reducing the time and energy needed to maintain a required temperature and lowering energy costs.
We have done just that in our work with a leading drywall manufacturer. We designed a heat exchanger system that harnessed and reintegrated the substantial heat and water vapor emitted from their drywall dryer system. Read the case study to find out more.
Automotive
Automakers are starting to feel the pinch of environmental requirements. PRE-heat can take on much of that burden by reducing emissions and energy usage. Not only are air-to-air heat exchangers better for the environment, they will also save on your energy bills and create a more efficient manufacturing process.
Air-to-air heat exchangers can be incorporated into numerous areas of the assembly line, such as paint line heater boxes and the waste heat emitted by thermal oxidizers.
Mining and Minerals
Whatever metal or mineral your company works with, PRE-heat can develop a heat exchanger system to streamline your process, lowering your facility’s energy consumption all while creating more heat. Our air-to-air systems are frequently utilized with industry-standard processes like calciner combustion air and calciner process air.
Alternative Fuels
Global energy usage is on the rise, and alternative fuels are emerging to meet the demand. PRE-heat is here to support this growing industry with dryer preheaters for biofuel manufacturing and oxidizer fume preheaters.
Our heat exchangers are extremely versatile in biofuel manufacturing, managing high temperatures, pressures, and vapors. They can also be utilized in fume abatement equipment and preheating dryer air. Heat exchangers are frequently used with ethanol plant RTO secondary dryers and battery oven dryers.
Combustion Air
In industry, achieving optimal combustion efficiency while minimizing environmental impact is crucial. Air-to-air heat exchangers paired with boilers, thermal oil heaters, and heat treat furnaces can ensure that your facility’s combustion air is logically utilized, resulting in cleaner operations and compliance with environmental regulations.
Start Your Heat Exchanger Project
No matter what industry you operate in, PRE-heat has the expertise to develop and install an innovative air-to-air heat exchanger system for your business. Start streamlining your processes and saving energy today. Contact us today to start your project.
For more than 40 years, the team at PRE-heat, Inc. has focused on high-performance industrial air-to-air heat exchangers as well Read more
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- Published in Applications, Featured
