Smokehouse and Oven Control

H2O / Wet Bulb Sensor Rental Program for Smokehouse & Oven Applications

The sensor provides real time absolute humidity in the exhaust of any dryer, oven or kiln.  Particulates, organics, liquid smoke, natural smoke and condensing compounds have no effect on our sensor. The sensor is a direct measurement of the water molecule and is very repeatable so that the plant can dial into the same number every time with confidence. The accuracy of our sensor at 90C is 0.1% RH. Our sensor also does not have any maintenance so the plant will not have to keep calibrating the sensor like they do with the wet sock.  The sensor can also handle cleaning solutions without issue.

Using the following baseline data, the wet sock sensors have the following accuracy:  90% RH at 90 C, the wet bulb temperature is 87.32 C.  If the wet bulb varies +/- 1 degree C, the RH varies from 86.47 to 93.63 RH.  The accuracy of the temperature measurement is based on no radiation, pure convection, a clean wick and that the sock is always wet. This is never the case so a 1 degree variance is somewhat conservative.

The sensor allows the plants to run with tighter controls which will improve yields and batch times.  If the plant can improve yields by 0.5%, the savings for the sensor can be quite significant.

The following document, cooking-technology,  reviews how important the wet bulb temperature is for the cooking time and drying rate control.

For higher temperature oven applications (above 220F to 600 F), our sensor is the only sensor which can provide accurate and reliable control.  The wet bulb temperature will be programmed into the oven data acquisition system and the steam can be controlled to a fixed wet bulb temperature to optimize cooking efficiency and to protect against salmonella.