Thermal management in commercial bread baking

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)
Energy Efficiency(Industry)

Basic and strategic applied research
Applied Research and Development

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr N Kapur
Mechanical Engineering
University of Leeds

Standard

EPSRC

01 October 2009

30 June 2013

45 months

£466,597

Process engineering

Yorkshire & Humberside

Energy : Energy

Dr N Kapur, Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds

Dr HM Thompson, Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds
Professor V Toropov, Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London

Project Contact, Enviros
Project Contact, Spooner Industries Ltd
Project Contact, Altair Engineering Ltd
Project Contact, Warburtons Limited

As energy costs increase, and legislation to reduce carbon emissions are implemented, then existing processes that use significant amounts of heat become expensive; in the case of food production this results in higher prices to the consumer. This work will examine the heat use within three key stages of the baking process (i) proving (where dough is conditioned) (ii) baking in continuous ovens where dough enters on a conveyor and exits as baked product (iii) cooling where the bread is reducedin temperature over a period of 2 hours.This information will be used to guide a study where the potential for (a) reduction and (b) re-use of heat will be assessed. This will be through a two-pronged approach. Firstly a study will be made to retro-fit existing installations for heat recovery and reduction, for example using a 'heat exchanger' to capture waste heat in one part of the process and use it in another. The second approach will be to make a detailed study of the exact conditions within the oven using experimental measurement and computational predictions. The aim here is to establish the baseline conditions for baking, and then determine enhanced equipment setup and designs.The results of this work in the short-to-medium term will be optimised process lines, in the longer term it will guide future design work of ovens and offer better competitiveness to UK industries

14/09/09