Defining ways for improving automatic technological lines for shock freezing of food products

This study redesigns technological lines for dynamic shock freezing of food products with a long shelf life. The task is to reduce energy consumption per product unit and decrease the cost of maintaining technological lines. It was established that replacing analog sensors of technological process parameters with digital devices makes it possible to shorten transition intervals between different operating modes of the line by more than 10 minutes. Applying controlled valves and gates in the equipment makes it possible to optimize automatic freezing modes, taking into account both the quality indicators of frozen products and the efficiency of equipment operation. Modernization of equipment makes it possible to devise more effective automatic operation programs for shock freezing technological lines under the supervision of a single operator. This approach involves the selection of different automatic technological freezing modes for different products. In this case, product parameters (thermal conductivity, percentage of water content, dimensions of individual products) and the final state of frozen products (deep freezing to –30°C, quick freezing to –10°C, or others) are taken into account. The service functions of the automatic control system in the technological line have been expanded. In particular, these include self-diagnosis, rapid automatic response to emergencies, automatic warning about refrigerant leakage, enhanced informativeness of the text-symbol display, as well as convenience of the operator-equipment interface. Experimental studies on the modernized automatic line have shown a reduction in electricity consumption by almost 50% while maintaining the capacity of cold generation