Refrigeration – Article moving means – Continuous longitudinal-type conveyor
Patent
1994-04-01
1995-05-16
Caposela, Ronald C.
Refrigeration
Article moving means
Continuous longitudinal-type conveyor
312236, 312401, 312406, F25D 2504
Patent
active
054150132
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention generally relates to an air treatment plant for foodstuffs, comprising a housing, an elongate trough provided therein for receiving the foodstuff to be treated, a heat exchanger and a fan assembly for producing an air flow circulating through the heat exchanger, up through the trough and back to the heat exchanger.
The invention relates more specifically to a freezing plant, but is also applicable to other air treatment plants, e.g. for cooling, drying or heating. In the freezing plant, the heat exchanger is a cooling-coil battery.
Common to conventional freezing plants of this type is the mechanically complex and bulky design, which of course increases plant costs, complicates their assembly and sometimes--for want of space--also makes it more difficult to run them. Moreover, the complex design makes it difficult to adapt the devices to different product requirements, and also renders maintenance and operation costly and troublesome.
The description above of conventional freezing plants generally applies to previously known air treatment plants of the type stated by way of introduction.
The object of the present invention therefore is to simplify the design and reduce the space requirement of an air treatment plant of the type defined above, whereby also to provide a compact air treatment plant which is comparatively easy to mount, operate, clean and service.
According to the invention, this object is achieved in that the housing is designed with a plurality of substantially identical modular units extending transversely of the longitudinal direction of the trough and comprising self-supporting bottom and side wall panels, each having an insulating layer and, provided on the inside thereof, a layer of stainless steel or similar material, and in that each modular unit is divided into two submodules, each having a bottom panel forming part of the bottom of the housing, and a side wall panel forming part of a respective one of the side walls of the housing.
Thus, air treatment plants of varying size, both longitudinally and laterally, can be easily assembled, and no separate supporting structure for the units included in the air treatment plant is required. By using stainless steel or a material having similar properties on the inside of the bottom and side wall panels, maintenance is facilitated and rigorous hygienic demands can be adequately met.
Suitably, each modular unit is provided with an attachment for a fan included in the fan assembly, and a base for a heat exchanger unit included in the heat exchanger. This provides a practically complete modularisation of the air treatment plant.
By arranging fans and heat exchanger units on the same or substantially the same level, and providing the attachment on one of the submodules and the base on the other, a low overall height is achieved. This also results in a low infeed level and a low outfeed level as compared with conventional air treatment plants, in which the heat exchanger is generally disposed underneath the trough. The low infeed level means that no upward conveyor is required on the infeed side, which yields hygienic advantages. The low outfeed level means that no downward conveyor is required on the outfeed side, whereby delicate products can be treated without any risk of damage.
An especially good compactness can be achieved by letting the side wall panel of one submodule also form a side wall of the trough. Parts included in the air treatment plant for guiding the air flow may consist of partitions, which are also distributed modulewise and one of which can at the same time form the other side wall of the trough.
One or more separate, elongate bottom panels are advantageously used to interconnect the bottom panels of the submodules, the upper sides of the bottom panels of the submodules being given a downward inclination towards one and/or the other end wall of the housing.
A very stable design of the bottom and side wall panels is achieved if these panels are provided with a metal layer also on the outside of the insula
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Caposela Ronald C.
Frigoscandia Food Process Systems AB
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