Project coordinator – Kaunas University of Technology. Project partner – Lavango Engineering LT. The purpose of the project is to provide intelligence functions to the industrial spiral freezer under development by automating the training of its operating recipes with information theory algorithms, preparing tools for optimizing the monitoring of the freezer’s work, and creating a procedure for design.
To achieve the intended goal, the following tasks are implemented:
– Adapt the spiral freezer model and identify its parameters;
– Improve the monitoring system and implement management measures;
– Perform economic criterion alignment, taking into account energy costs and process duration
Project funding:
The state budget of the Republic of Lithuania
Project results:
The research method implemented in the project includes the method of distribution of mass, time, and energy costs. The characteristics of the units of the refrigeration system were optimally selected for the given task of managing the performance of food product freezing. It includes algorithms for model construction, parameter identification, and a procedure for creating a training function designed for new operating recipes that were not known in advance when designing the production equipment. It has been identified that the bottleneck in the designed mass and energy balance equations is the heat transfer rate coefficient. Identifying this parameter directly affects the dynamics of the heat exchange model. The selection of the heat transfer rate coefficient was made, taking into account the experimental data of the refrigeration process of the industrial freezer and the theoretical, empirical curves from literature sources.
A mathematical model of a spiral freezer with a set of manipulated parameters (control/effect signals) was created during the project. The tool for creating smart recipes predicts the temperature of the refrigerated product, as well as the amount of water evaporated from it, based on different controlled effect signals (refrigerated air temperature, refrigerated air flow speed, i.e. fan rotation speed, and spiral conveyor speed), geometric and thermal characteristics of the product, and initial conditions. During the research, it was observed that the non-linearity of the product temperature change is due to the geometric structure of the freezer; the product moving along the spiral conveyor is affected by the cooling air in a non-linear manner. When moving in a spiral through the fans, the temperature of the product changes with a higher acceleration; when moving through the heat collection fans, the temperature of the product changes with a correspondingly lower acceleration.
The developed smart spiral freezer digital equivalent (model) enables device users to quickly and accurately create technological process protocols for processing different products, thus saving time and testing resources. At the same time, it is possible to efficiently produce small batches by quickly changing equipment settings according to other technological processes (recipes).
Period of project implementation: 2021-09-01 - 2022-08-31
Project coordinator: Kaunas University of Technology
Project partners: UAB "LAVANGO GROUP"
