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Total Operations and Maintenance

Views: 3006

Food Processing Plant Design: Designing the Most Efficient Waste-piping System

 

Round floor drains are becoming more common.

 

There are numerous factors to consider when designing a wastewater piping system for a food manufacturing plant. Where will drains be located? What types of piping materials will be used? Can the system be designed to accommodate future physical growth of the facility? Yet the most important factor of a waste-piping system is efficiency – efficiency in location, layout, materials and installation. Here’s what you need to know:

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Five Ways to Ensure Your Food Safety Audit Goes Well

Quality assurance is one key to a successful food safety audit

 

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) expanded the FDA’s authority to regulate the conditions of food manufacturing facilities and how products are produced, manufactured, transported, imported and marketed in the United States. Food safety audits, whether conducted by an internal team or by an outside consultant, will ensure that your food processing plant is in full compliance with FDA regulations. Continue Reading “Five Ways to Ensure Your Food Safety Audit Goes Well”

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Standard Equipment Specifications: Benefits and Considerations

A maintenance access platform illustrates a sanitary design that leaves no chance for any possible bacterial harborage.

While designing a new food processing production line or adding to a line, there are a number of factors to consider when outlining equipment specifications, including product run rates, packaging format, temperature and many others. Plant managers often turn to different vendors to provide different components, but it is essential to have standardized equipment to improve efficiency, production, sanitation and aesthetics.

Inappropriate or incompatible equipment can mean loss of production time and loss of income. Whether you’re adding a single piece of equipment or designing a full production line from scratch, detailed, standard requirements should be communicated among the entire team participating in the design process.

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Getting the Most Out of Your HMI

Your team relies on HMI screens to monitor real-time performance of your refrigeration control systems. But if your dashboards are not presenting that information in a clear, usable format, you’re not getting a clear picture. Your HMI should present performance metrics in a format that’s customized for your system to allow your team to effectively diagnose, analyze and manage your systems.

Your HMI screens should include an overview of the entire plant in addition to a single view of the machine room. Each piece of equipment can be animated and color-coded to show operational status, capacity, pressures, communication errors and other functions. Alarms and other critical issues are easily recognizable with pop-ups and red animation.

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What Can Refrigeration Remote Monitoring Do for You?

The ability to remotely monitor your refrigeration system can have a significant impact on your bottom line, reducing energy, maintenance and overall operating costs. If you’ve recently upgraded your refrigeration controls system or are in the process of upgrading, it’s important to ensure your new system offers remote access. This will allow for speedy diagnostics, offsite troubleshooting capabilities, and constant monitoring, all with a “big picture” view of the entire system.

There are three key benefits of remote monitoring:

1. Diagnostics

Remote access allows your team or an outsourced consultant to monitor the system 24/7 for alerts such as refrigerant leak detection, high liquid levels, high product temperatures, high system pressure, and more. Outsourced consultants who offer a higher level of specialized expertise than your in-house team can view your entire system in real time and offer advanced insight and support.

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Benefits of Upgrading Your Refrigeration Controls

Modern refrigeration controls systems have truly come of age. If your controls system is more than a few years old, you might be surprised at the benefits that newer systems provide:

1. Ethernet architecture — Unlike older serial networks with slower, linear structure, new control systems operate via your existing Ethernet. These networks are non-proprietary so in-house IT teams can easily troubleshoot issues, and repair and replace parts.

2. Improved compressor and VFD communications — Hard-wired serial control systems are slower to communicate with your compressors and VFDs. With an Ethernet platform, the system can pull data much quicker and more efficiently.

3. A single integrated platform — Old systems are often disjointed, with input/outputs, PLC hardware, VFDs, communications protocols and automation controllers all operating independently or requiring customized interfaces. Newer systems are integrated, providing you with a single, unified platform with standards-compliant methods for configuring, operating and maintaining a range of instruments and equipment.

4. Increased data availability — With a single, integrated platform, you’ll have increased access to energy, production, and utility cost information, leading to better decision-making at the management level. You can generate trend analyses, alarm logs, energy management data, and runtime reports in real-time to make the necessary changes and modifications to ensure your refrigeration system is running at optimal efficiency.

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Is it Time to Upgrade or Replace Your Refrigeration Controls?

While new refrigeration control systems are significant capital investments, their value far exceeds their cost. In large food processing or cold storage facilities, refrigeration typically accounts for more than half of the facility’s total electric energy use. And with unplanned downtime costing many facilities tens of thousands of dollars per day, an aging refrigeration control system can put your business at significant risk.

If you answer yes to any of the following questions, it may be time to upgrade or replace your existing system:

  • Is your current control system more than 10-15 years old?
  • Have you experienced unplanned facility downtime due to refrigeration failures?
  • Are the individual components of your refrigeration controls system operating as islands, meaning they work independently and don’t “talk” to each other?
  • Are you still operating on a serial network that’s linear, making it difficult to expand your capabilities?
  • Do you have unstable suction and head pressures? Are you unable to trim fans and pumps via VFD control?

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