Temperature monitoring in the food industry is an important matter for safety. It is at the heart of the HACCP and of the Food Safety Management System. Every process must get certification from the authorities. At the same time, optimization of the process is needed to increase profit margins that are often very low. These two requirements need precise temperature measurements at numerous location and time.
Proper data loggers will provide the information needed to reduce or increase oven or autoclave heat, slower or increase the speed of conveyors, get more or less freezing capacity in the cooling stage. All seconds and degrees count for the safety of the food, and for the balance sheet at the end of the day.
The instrumentation useful to address these issues should have a good precision and resolution to ensure that the minimal temperature is reached for safety while not too high to cause energy losses or excessive process time. It should be small enough to fit in tight spaces, in can, bottles or a small doe and be able to run through all the cooking or cooling process. A small thermal time constant is essential to be able to read rapidly and precisely the temperature change. The data logger installed inside an imperial roll before being fried on a conveyer must have its sensor right in the middle of the roll with limited thermal mass to properly read the temperature rising right in the middle of the roll while in the fryer.
Since the instrument must be inside the food to properly monitor its temperature, it’s housing material must be approved for contact with food. Ease of deployment is important for efficiency in the certification or routine test, as the downloading of the data for analysis. Finally, it must be easy to clean and sterilize for another use.
Alpha Mach offers a good range of instruments, each with its temperature range, precision, size, thermal time constant for all cooking, freezing and sterilization processes. Contact us to get more information for your specific requirements.