Baking & Snack - October 2010 - 81

OVENS

and reintroduces it into the gas stream to
help fuel the oven. "We are able to use ethanol as a
complementary biofuel that we can directly put to use in
the oven," said Jim Pezzuto, president, of ERB CORE.
The newly developed energy recovery system with the
proprietary ethanol recovery block eliminates the need
for stack oxidizers traditionally used to burn-off ethanol
and other VOCs created during the baking process.
CORE also features an evaporative water recovery unit
that recaptures water from the water vapor in the oven stack
gases and provides the bakery with the recycled hot water for
washing service and steam for the proofer, Mr. Cavallo noted.
The 50% fuel savings achieved with the system results from a combination of the fuel saved by preheating combustion air and the reduction in proofer energy
consumption, along with the ethanol being used to fuel
the oven and the fuel previously needed for oxidizers
and process boilers. Consequently, CORE dramatically
reduces the carbon footprint of the bakery.
The only by-product of the process is carbon dioxide,
which has a temperature of less than 85°F when it is released into the atmosphere. "The next step is taking that
CO2 and piping it to a greenhouse," Mr. Cavallo quipped.
QUALITY CONTROL. Baking Technology Systems, Inc.
(BakeTech), Tucker, GA, now offers a color imaging
system that performs quality control analysis on buns
at the exit of its ovens. The imaging system automatically adjusts the oven controls accordingly. Geri Walker,
president of BakeTech, said the company received a grant
from the state of Georgia and worked with the Georgia
Institute of Technology and Flowers Foods, Thomasville,
GA, to develop the quality control system.
"What happens with any fermentation system is that
you have a front end and back end to each batch of
dough, and we can see with the vision system that buns
made from the same batch go from darker to lighter over
time. With a 20-minute mix, you could see a 20-minute
cycle [in coloration] coming out of the oven. The idea
was to straight-line that and eliminate the color variation
from the start of the batch to its end."

BAKING & SNACK / October 2010

▲ Ovens today are installed much faster in bakeries because they are easily
assembled in sections.
READING BAKERY SYSTEMS

BakeTech builds continuous ovens, which, according
to Mr. Walker, have become fairly standard for the baking of fast food buns. Its ovens offer full zone control, including separate control of top and bottom recirculation
air. A PLC with touch-screen interface allows the baker
to create different set points for each of these parameters.
Humidity control helps to give ovens the same atmosphere whether it is a wet day or a dry day, Mr. Walker
said. "The air in the bakery, the combustion air that is being pulled into the oven - all of it varies in humidity, and
our humidity control manages the damper and maintains
a consistent level," he said. "That is unique to BakeTech."
BakeTech's continuous ovens are already energy efficient compared with tray and tunnel ovens, according to
Mr. Walker. "You don't have all that metal to heat up, and
you don't have big openings through which heat can escape," he explained as the reasons why continuous ovens
are naturally more energy efficient.
"Companies that put in continuous ovens tell us how
much less fuel they are using," he added, noting that such ovens use approximately one-third less energy than a tray oven
and about one-half the energy that the typical tunnel oven.
OVEN CONTROL. Complete PLC management systems,
according Mr. Foran, are an emerging technology for ovens. "A high-end management system can include items
such as custom reporting, increased data storage for
trending, downtime analysis and images for individual
recipes to help the operator achieve the target product,
along with access to the equipment manual through the
human-machine interface," he said.
Turkington USA unveiled the the next evolution of
its 960 tunnel oven at IBIE. Developed to answer the
latest market needs in flexibility and energy efficiency,
the oven maintains the robust design characteristics of a
proven heritage. "We are laying out an oven process control (OPC) system that allows a customer to select from
very basic oven control when doing very long continu-

Baking & Snack - October 2010

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