Plan Automation is dedicated to bringing its customers the best product inspection and quality assurance solutions so you can protect your brand and your customers.
To this end, Plan Automation has added thermometry systems from leading UK manufacturer Celsius Instruments.
What Makes Celsius Instruments’ Thermometry Systems So Good?
Normally, the process of monitoring the temperature of chilled or frozen products involves the use of a probe of some kind. To take a temperature measurement, you would have to penetrate (or probe) the product you’re testing—easy enough for ice cream, but incredibly difficult with frozen meat.
Probe-based temperature measurement introduces a new sanitary challenge in your production line; keeping the probe clean from one measurement to the next to prevent cross-contamination. Also, the use of a probe may mean having to destroy or waste product, which wastes money.
Celsius Instruments Thermometry Systems uses a non-invasive, non-contact method of measuring the temperature of chilled or frozen food products both packaged and un-packaged. This largely eliminates cross-contamination risks.
These temperature measurements also take into account the temperature of the entire product being checked (called equalized temperature) —not just the shell or core temperature of one section of the product. This gives you a clear, consistent temperature reading instead of one that varies because of where you positioned the thermometer.
Because the process is completely non-invasive, there's no need to throw out product because it came into contact with a probe or had to be opened up for a probe to get a core temperature reading. This could save some food producers thousands in wasted food costs.
Additionally, these thermometry systems automatically log temperature readings for each product they test—improving traceability for your production line.
How it Works
All organic matter emits a minute amount of thermal radiation—the hotter the object, the more radiation it will emit. Celsius Instruments’ thermometry devices are designed to detect these minute radiation emissions and measure them.
Most food products that are chilled or frozen have high concentrations of water, sugar, and/or fat which absorb microwaves with ease. In the absence of a microwave oven, the water in a food product becomes a very efficient emitter for these microwaves.
Celsius Instruments describes their thermometry systems as a kind of “passive reverse microwave oven” in that it absorbs the microwaves emitted by food rather than bombarding it with microwaves. This system is 100% passive, there is absolutely no radiation being produced by the system.
While the energy emitted by most food products is miniscule (about 1 million times smaller than the amount produced by a cell phone), Celsius Instruments' systems can reliably detect these trace energy emissions.
Also, this microwave energy easily escapes from the interior of most food products, so the temperature measurement taken by Celsius’ inspection machines are an aggregate of the entire package (equalized temperature).
Microwaves can also pass through many packaging materials, allowing accurate temperature readings of many sealed packages without having to break the seals which eliminates product waste.
Because the microwave radiation being detected is so minute, it’s necessary to make sure that no outside radiation is allowed to interfere. To ensure accuracy, the microwave chamber of Celsius’ thermography system uses a complete enclosure with a conducting flexible gasket in the door seal to create a Faraday cage. This blocks external radiation from interfering with the temperature measurement.
The internal surfaces of the chamber are coated in a silver plating to act as a microwave mirror. This ensures that more of the emitted radiation reaches the antenna in the chamber; which maximizes the accuracy of the reading.
How Reliable is This Technology?
The Celsius can measure the temperature of products down to +/- 0.5°C in accuracy for chilled foods.
This method of measurement is so accurate and sensitive that scientists use satellites equipped with the same technology to measure the temperature of the Earth from space, and to map out cosmic microwave background radiation!
It’s a truly space age technology being brought to bear for the benefit of modern food manufacturers. Learn more about Celsius Instruments’ thermometry system by contacting us today!
