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The large-scale coke oven is a developing trend in coking technology, and the influence of the industrial coke oven size on the quality of metallurgical coke needs to be revealed. Under the same raw coals and blending ratios, metallurgical cokes were obtained from top-loading coke ovens with carbonization chamber heights of 6 and 7 m, respectively. The macroscopic quality and microstructure of the refined metallurgical cokes were comprehensively tested. The results showed that the conventional cold and thermal strength indexes of Coke-7m were better than those of Coke-6m. The comprehensive thermal strength at multiple temperatures further showed that the thermal strength advantage of Coke-7m was mainly manifested at low temperatures (1050 and 1100 °C) or a high temperature (1300 °C), where the solution-loss reaction mode of coke tended to be the "uniform reaction model" or "unreacted core model". At medium temperatures, the solution-loss reaction mode tended to be the "gradient reaction model", which had a greater destructive effect on the thermal strength of coke. At this time, the thermal strengths of the two cokes were close. Microstructure characterization revealed that industrial coke oven size mainly affected the carbon structure of coke but had little effect on pore structure. The advantage of Coke-7m regarding carbon structure is an important reason for its superior macroscopic quality compared to Coke-6m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigated the combined effects of cooking methods (household griddle (C1), household conventional oven (C2), industrial oven (C3), storage temperature (refrigeration /freezing) and packaging system (aerobic and vacuum), on quality of chicken burgers. The results show that refrigeration storage favours the retention of moisture content and the juiciness of chicken burgers, but the application of vacuum (RV) was the best option to maintain the juiciness and moisture content (p < 0.05) of the samples prepared in an industrial oven with forced-air convection. The highest protein content was observed in the samples that were frozen in vacuum packaging (FV), and the lipid content was highest in the samples chilled in conventional packaging (RC) at 1 atm. Regardless of the cooking method used and the internal pressure of the packages (≤ 1 atm), refrigerated storage contributed to the best scores (p < 0.05) for color and flavor attributes. The treatments that presented the highest sensory acceptance index were the frozen samples in vacuum packaging prepared in the industrial oven, conventional oven, and grill (90%, 82.66%, and 74.33%, respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Packaging materials for microwave application should be generally designed based on products properties and processing conditions such as microwavability, susceptibility, processing condition, barrier properties, mechanical properties, storage condition, sustainability, convenience, and so on. Ready-to-eat products are packed in materials that can sustain thermal processing in an industrial oven and warming process in a household oven. In this context, high barrier polymers are versatile microwave packaging materials due to the microwave transparency (unlike metalized film) and high barrier. Additionally, microwave packaging materials used for ready-to-cook are intended to facilitate the microwave heating of the products in a domestic oven. The introduction of a functional feather to microwave packaging tends to improve the microwaving efficiency such as susceptor and shielding in the household oven or self-venting microwave packaging to safely release the internal steam. Furthermore, microwave-assisted thermal processing intends to control microbial contamination, requiring materials with adequate stability during processing and storage. The features of these materials are addressed in this review along with details on the basic requirements and advanced technologies for microwave packaging, microwave processing of prepackaged food, and migration testing. The prospects of microwave packaging materials in the near future are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Packaging materials for microwave application should be generally designed based on products properties and processing conditions such as microwavability, susceptibility, processing condition, barrier properties, mechanical properties, storage condition, sustainability, convenience, and so on. Ready-to-eat products are packed in materials that can sustain thermal processing in an industrial oven and warming process in a household oven. In this context, high barrier polymers are versatile microwave packaging materials due to the microwave transparency (unlike metalized film) and high barrier. Additionally, microwave packaging materials used for ready-to-cook are intended to facilitate the microwave heating of the products in a domestic oven. The introduction of a functional feather to microwave packaging tends to improve the microwaving efficiency such as susceptor and shielding in the household oven or self-venting microwave packaging to safely release the internal steam. Furthermore, microwave-assisted thermal processing intends to control microbial contamination, requiring materials with adequate stability during processing and storage. The features of these materials are addressed in this review along with details on the basic requirements and advanced technologies for microwave packaging, microwave processing of prepackaged food, and migration testing. The prospects of microwave packaging materials in the near future are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims to develop a novel and safer milling route to produce Hard Metals. Considering the risks associated with milling fine particles under organic solvents, especially the increased fire and explosion risks, we propose milling under aqueous milling media to diminish the risks associated with fire hazards, while maintaining the oxidation level at a minimum. The samples were sintered in an industrial sintering oven under vacuum at 1380°C subsequent to milling and drying. The characterisation of the materials has been done by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, particle size analysis, optical microscopy, and a magnetometer. The obtained results indicate that appropriate properties of the powders after milling and drying as well as the desired biphasic (Co-WC) phases were obtained after sintering, thus proving the feasibility of such a route and diminishing specific fire hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two different meat emulsions were prepared with different physical stability: R1 with 6.28 ± 1.13% total expressible fluid and R2 with 17.7 ± 1.48%. The emulsions were placed in plastic casings at three different surface tensions (ST), expressed as contact angle, and three distinct overstuffing percentages (OS). The stuffed samples were cooked in an industrial oven. After cooling, purge losses (PL) and texture profile analysis (TPA) were measured. The reduced surface tension of the plastic casings significantly decreased the PL of both recipes. In the case of R2, a combination of high OS and low ST was necessary to reduce PL in a 60%. In the case of TPA, OS had a statistical influence on parameters like chewiness, cohesiveness, and hardness. Plastic casings with different surface tension (to increase adherence of meat emulsion to the casing) stuffed at different levels of overstuffing percentages (to reduce free space between meat emulsion and casing) represent a potential tool to reduce PL of products based on low stability meat emulsions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern ovens are utilized from large span of time for completing different heat treatment cycles like baking, curing, annealing, aging, drying, and so on. There are numerous sorts of industrial ovens namely batch, relieving, drying, baking, reflow, clean room, conveyor types, and so on. Conveyor oven helps to perform the heat treatment cycle in an uninterrupted flow, including the heating of the objects followed by the cooling down of the same object. A multipurpose conveyor-type industrial oven is designed using analytical approach for heat treatment process on various objects. This article presents the modeling and CFD analysis of conveyor-type continuous ovens. Simulation of the entire model of conveyor-type industrial oven is carried out in Solidworks Flow package. Since the boundary conditions of an actual industrial oven is open at both entry and exit points, same condition is maintained in the CFD analysis. With the help of the simulation model, researchers can study and observe the temperature distribution throughout the oven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heat transfer modeling of large industrial ovens such as those used in automotive paintshops is difficult due to the large and multiple scales and long curing times. The flow inside a convective oven is turbulent, and the process includes large temperature gradients. An efficient simulation requires a simplified and localized model of the heat transfer coupling. We present a novel method with three ingredients: localization using local Nusselt numbers of the oven nozzles, projection of Nusselt number profiles onto the target, and efficient conduction modeling on a coarse background mesh. The approach, which was developed in a research project together with the Swedish automotive industry, makes it possible to accurately simulate a curing oven with close to real-time performance. The simulation results are demonstrated to be in close agreement with measurements from automotive production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a legal dispute in Paraguay related to the word "tatakua," which is the name of a traditional oven used in the country. The conflict arose when artisans who were not part of an association began to make and sell portable tatakua ovens, which led to a complaint of misappropriation. The National Secretariat of Culture declared the knowledge and crafting techniques of Ñai’ûpo (ceramics) as National Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Public Ministry requested the dismissal of the case due to lack of crime, and the Intellectual Property Office rejected the registration application submitted for the portable "tatakua" oven as a model and industrial design. [Extracted from the article]

Summary: The aim of the study was to evaluate the physical and microstructural characteristics of crackers baked in four different industrial baking ovens (indirect radiation‐cyclotherm, indirect convection, hybrid and industrial tunnel‐ITO). Indirect convection and cyclotherm ovens provide the highest (5685.43 ± 51 W m−2) and the lowest (4860 ± 38.87 W m−2) amount of heat flux, respectively. Despite the amount of heat flux, indirect convection led to crackers with the highest moisture (7.86% vs. 4.82% in clyclotherm) and specific volume, but the lowest hardness. Cyclotherm resulted in crackers with lower specific volume, surface area, porosity, smooth and regular surface. Conversely, the hybrid and ITO ovens showed closer heat flux, leading to crackers with similar moisture content, texture parameters, specific volume, browning and inner porosity. Overall results show the potential of baking using different ovens for modifying the quality parameters of the crackers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiata pine wood packaging needs to be sterilized according to international phytosanitary standards. In this work the heat sterilization time of green radiata pine packaging material stacked without separators was studied on an industrial scale, considering as variable factors the steam temperature (80, 90 and 100) °C, the thickness of the wood (16, 38 and 53) mm and the height of the wood pile (150, 200 and 400) mm. The pilot experiment was conducted in a 40 m3 industrial oven. Subsequently the experiment was scaled to 100 m3 ovens. The results showed that the heat sterilization time in the analyzed temperature range depends significantly on the thickness and height of the stack. The minimum time to obtain heat sterilization conditions of radiata pine packaging material varied from 123 min to a maximum of 2275 min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lack of N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirators (FFRs) during the COVID-19 crisis has placed healthcare workers at risk. It is important for any N95 reuse strategy to determine the effects that proposed protocols would have on the physical functioning of the mask, as well as the practical aspects of implementation. Here we propose and implement a method of heating N95 respirators with moisture (85°C, 60-85% humidity). We test both mask filtration efficiency and fit to validate this process. Our tests focus on the 3M 1860, 3M 1870, and 3M 8210 Plus N95 models. After five cycles of the heating procedure, all three respirators pass both quantitative fit testing (score of >100) and show no degradation of mask filtration efficiency. We also test the Chen Heng V9501 KN95 and HKYQ N95 finding no degradation of mask filtration efficiency, however even for unheated masks these scored <50 for every fit test. The heating method presented here is scalable from individual masks to over a thousand a day with a single industrial convection oven, making this method practical for local application inside health-care facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A domestic cookie baking process was modeled using nonlinear forward and inverse models to predict surface temperature, moisture content and browning index that describe the baking quality of the end product. The baking processes were carried out at different oven temperatures (160, 180, 200 °C) and the changes in surface temperature, moisture content and browning index were determined to construct the identification models namely nonlinear polynomial models (PLN) and nonlinear artificial-neural network (ANN) model. The parameters of the artificial models were optimized using least-squares estimation and Levenberg-Marquardt optimization, respectively. The predicted baking characteristics in both forward and inverse phases were in good agreement with the measured ones even for the browning index which was difficult to model because of the its nonminimum-phase dynamics. The application results indicated that the developed intelligient models were very accurate, having low root mean-squared errors, the ANN model approximated the desired values better than the PLN models for all the state variables. Thus, the designed ANN models are applicable for the automatized industrial and domestic oven designs of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rice is considered as a staple food, which approximately half of the world population consumes. However, it is apparent that rice surplus and low price problem still remain. Consequently, instant rice has been promoted in order to tackle with the present issue and open more choices to the consumers. The current problem of commercial instant rice is slow rehydration and poor quality. This research focused on the rice cooking methods to improve the quality of instant rice dried by industrial microwave oven. Four cooking methods were investigated: Boiling in a pressure cooker (BPC), Steaming in a pressure cooker (SPC), Boiling water method (BL) and Steaming method (SM). The industrial microwave oven (6,400 watt, 2,450 MHz) was used to dry the cooked rice in each treatment to the moisture content lower than 14% (w.b.). The results showed that the hardness, stickiness and whiteness of rehydrated rice cooking by different methods had no significant difference with freshly cooked rice. BPC method is the recommended method for instant rice processing since it could provide more porous structures after drying, which relate to fast rehydration for 3 minutes in boiling water and better quality. Furthermore, after rehydration process, the grain appearance was pretty good and did not stick together. Therefore, this knowledge can be applied for the instant rice production at the industrial level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aqueous suspensions of hard metal powders and their use are known to have significant environmental and economic advantages over the systems employed nowadays using organic solvents. The present research describes developing a novel and less harmful processing route for hard metal production. Aqueous spray drying is convenient for obtaining dried WC-Co granules without extensive agglomeration. The spray-dried powders exhibit good flowability due to their shape and relatively narrow particle size distribution. The spray-dried granules have been pressed and sintered in an industrial sintering oven under a vacuum. The characterisation of the samples has highlighted the size, morphology, and some technological properties, while the sample's metallurgical properties have been assessed for the sintered compacts. By employing the abovementioned processes, both the granules and the subsequent hard metals revealed appropriate properties with biphasic (Co-WC) sintered compacts, which prove that such a process is feasible. [Display omitted] • The granules' properties can be controlled by employing different spray-drying temperatures. • The evaporation rate mainly influences the morphology and size of the granules. • High inlet temperature and relatively high binder content produce hollow spheres and doughnut shape granules. • Hydrogen debinding before sintering promotes a more uniform microstructure. • Partial vacuum (Argon) debinding leads to Co-rich areas, grain growth and some porosity to the different carbon balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial ovens play a significant role in many manufacturing and process industries. Despite the desire to enhance sustainability throughout this sector, research looking to improve the sustainability of industrial ovens is in its infancy. This paper presents seven sustainability indicators to assess potential oven investment; these include system air flow, production efficiency, operating costs, quality, capital investment, toxicity and employment opportunity. The indicators are straightforward, can be scored with readily available data and have been weighted by industrial experts. A hybrid multi-criteria approach using Fuzzy set theory and Monte Carlo simulation has been developed to help evaluate the sustainability of alternative improvement options. The approach is required as previous methodologies only present desirability as a singular figure; and therefore decision makers are not provided with sufficient information on associated risk. The presented approach incorporates uncertainty throughout, and gives option desirability in terms of mean, standard deviation and variance. The risks using this method are better understood and can significantly aid industrial decision makers. The sustainability indicators and hybrid approach have been demonstrated using a case study in the manufacturing industry; to identify the most sustainable way to increase cure conversion within an oven. Amongst the three options: increasing oven size, increasing oven temperature and new product formulation, increasing oven temperature shows the highest desirability, while new product formulation though has a lower desirability has the highest certainty. Furthermore, a cumulative desirability distribution plot gives a basis to select option that is aligned with the business's risk strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial ovens consume a considerable amount of energy and have a significant impact on product quality; therefore, improving ovens should be an important objective for manufacturers. This paper presents a novel and practical approach to oven improvement that emphasises both energy reduction and enhanced process performance. The three-phased approach incorporates product understanding, process improvement and process parameter optimisation. Cure understanding is developed using Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) and CIE-Lch colour tests, which together highlight the impact of temperature variation on cure conversion and resulting product quality. Process improvement encompasses thermodynamic modelling of the oven air to evaluate the impact of insulation on temperature uniformity and system responsiveness. Finally, process parameters, such as temperature, pressure negativity and air flow, are optimised to reduce energy consumption. The methodology has been effectively demonstrated for a 1 MW festoon oven, resulting in an 87.5 % reduction in cooling time, saving 202 h of annual downtime and a reduction in gas consumption by 20-30 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal gas pressure (IGP) developed by coking coals upon carbonisation accounts for oven wall pressure (OWP). If not controlled, this OWP may be potentially dangerous as it can easily exceed the 10 kPa acceptable limit. In this work, a simple, physically based, expression of IGP in a slot-type coke oven is presented, validated on data available in literature and modified into a ready-to-use expression of OWP fitted on measurements from the movable wall pilot oven of the Centre de Pyrolyse de Marienau (CPM) over a wide range of single coals. Expressed as a function of coal characteristics and carbonisation conditions, this OWP prediction is accurate enough to serve as a process tuning tool. However, probably because additivity rule does not apply easily to inert content, the model fails to predict OWP in case of blends. Extrapolation from the pilot oven to the industrial oven has been proved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]