The better the air flow, or air velocity, in your industrial bakery oven, the more consistently your products will bake, resulting in better coloring, texture and yields. The SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor or checker from Reading Thermal will help you optimize your products and reduce waste.
Reading Thermal, headquartered in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, has been focused on measuring and understanding the commercial baking process for more than 25 years. We manufacture and support the state-of-the-art SCORPION® 2 Profiling System which has become a standard in the baking industry.
By connecting our various smart sensors and sensor arrays to the SCORPION® 2 Data Logger and passing them through the oven with the product, the system can measure temperature, air velocity, heat flux, humidity, and other baking parameters that affect the quality of your products, and meet FSMA Kill Step Validation requirements.
Why Air Flow Matters?
The cooking performance of your commercial oven depends on the airflow within the oven. Measuring the air flow or air velocity is important because, along with other parameters like temperature and humidity, the air velocity influences the coloration, texture, firmness, and baking time of the final product.
In a radiant oven, the airflow comes from the moving conveyor, the exhaust system, and natural combustion air currents. In a convection oven, the airflow comes primarily from the air distribution plenums. In this case, airflow is crucial because it directly controls the amount of heat delivered to the product.
Oven air flow can be measured and recorded with the SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor. The sensor array provides you with a precise picture of airflow patterns inside the oven from side to side and end to end. The sensors collect data, at product level, as the array travels through the oven. The number of required sensors will vary with the width of the conveyor.
Air Velocity Profiles will help you spot airflow differences between baking zones, concentrated air velocities on isolated parts of the conveyor, and unwanted air currents at the entrance or exit of the oven that result in inconsistent baking.
Another innovative option is the SCORPION® 2 Temp+Airflow Sensor Array, which is designed to simultaneously profile temperature and airflow across the width of large tray and grid conveyor ovens exceeding 2m (6.5′). The sensor array contains nine Temp+Airflow sensors spaced evenly across the length of an aluminum bar. The sensor array comes in three sizes to match the most popular bread oven conveyor widths.
If you are an R&D/Corporate Engineer who needs to quickly profile an oven to benchmark it for product development, product transfer and oven matching across the company’s baking platforms, consider the SCORPION® 2 R&D Smart Sensor. Instead of requiring several passes through the oven with individual sensors, this multi-element sensor enables you to profile environment temperature, product core temperature, airflow, and energy transfer in a single pass-through process.
When you need an air flow checker for your industrial bakery oven, consider the innovative SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor from Reading Thermal, as well as our other state-of-the-art sensors and sensor arrays. Contact us online, or call our headquarters in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2 to learn more.