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Minooka Pastry has found a freezer that offers an energy
and dryness advantage. |
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| When Bob Zakreski of Minooka Pastry, added
a new walk-in freezer to help him handle his growing business of supplying frozen Eclair
shells to a number of retail outlets, he got a pleasant surprise. His new freezer
maintains temperature better, is much drier, uses less power, and even performed an
impressive recovery from a worker's mishap. |
Walter Knuth, Knuth Refrigeration,
Scranton, PA, installed the refrigeration equipment. He says, "Bob had heavy loads,
regularly moving hot product with a high moisture content into the freezer. A new system
design seemed seemed perfect for handling that load successfully, and, as it turned out,
it is." |
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| Shortly after the the new freezer was
installed, a worker accidentally left the door open overnight. "After
10 hours the room looked like a snowball," says Zakreski. "So I just closed the
door. A couple days later the room was perfectly clean and dry. The equipment did
everything but sweep the floor!" |
"I was surprised when Bob mentioned
the frost removal," adds Knuth. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't expect equipment to
perform like that. In this case, the moisture was attracted to the cold coil, then was
melted during defrost and went out the drain. The situation was probably helped by the
equipment's reverse flow, or as the manufacturer calls it, counter-flow, hot-gas
defrost design. |
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| "The defrost is really quick. It
melts from the inside of the coil and introduces little or no heat into the freezer. All
the heat goes into the defrost. This helps maintain the freezer temperature more closely
and maintains product quality. "With no electric heating
elements," Knuth adds, "there's a significantly lower power load. Theres also no
steaming from melting frost falling on the element. With this system, all the frost goes
down the drain. It's good at removing moisture from the freezer, |
and with all that pastry, that's a
necessity." "This freezer defrosts once a day,"
says Zakreski. "My older freezer defrosts six times a day - in the summer we have to
close it occasionally to defrost the coils. And the two freezers are similar in size. The
new one is 12 ft. X 15 ft., and the older one is about 13 ft. X 13 ft. I'm doing all the
freeze-down of our Eclair shells for bagging in the new freezer because it's so dependable
and maintains product quality." |
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| "Here's a customer who was willing to
spend a little extra to save in the long run," says Knuth. "One reason for the
success of this freezer is that we used two seperate systems - two 3HP condensing units -
each running a three-fan evaporator. With two systems we can stage them - one can kick off
when the load is light. And the redundancy covers us if there's a problem with |
one of the systems. "Actually, the old freezer, which we didn't install, was never really
set up right. It does, however, make the new one look even greater in comparison. But, it
would look good anyway. It takes in loads of moist, warm product at roughly 100F and
maintains the freezer very closely to -10F." |
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| "Not only does the system run well,
but it was pretty easy to install. The hot gas defrost is a simple two-pipe system, using
the conventional suction and liquid lines, with no special tricks. It doesn't require the
electrical wiring of heating elements. System charging was east and most of the valves,
controls, and accessories came factory-installed, which saves |
me a lot of time." The system used at Minooka Pastery is based on a patented refrigeration
design that moves the function of the receiver from a seperate tank to the condenser coil.
This provides a larger condensing surface, which, according to the manufacturer, can save
approximately 10% in power consumption. |
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| The system design requires a low amount of
start-up refrigerant, which can save around $200. The design also uses floating head
technology, whichcan lead to additional energy savings as the outside ambient temperature
drops. The design has counter-flow defrost. This variation on
a two-pipe hot-gas defrost minimizes the amount of power required.
With all the various savings added together, the manufacturer
figures that many syatems can pay for themselves over a 10-year life span, depending on
the location and other variables. |
Minooka Pastry has two walk-in freezers
and a walk-in cooler. The original freezer, once dual purpose, is now usewd for certain
products prepared in large quantities prior to sale. These include cakes cooled down for
icing, prepared Danish for sale over weekends when the retail shop is open but the bakery
closed, and things such as blueberries and cheesecake. The cooler is used for milk, eggs,
fruit fillings, and similar baking supplies. "Obviously
we're pleased with the new freezer," says Zakreski. "Dependable systems that
maintain product quality are a real lifeline to our business." |
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221 S. Berry St.
Brea, CA 92821
(714) 529-1935
FAX (714) 529-7203 |
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