By Sanitary Design Industries
St. Louis-based Sanitary Design Industries LLC (SDI) has spent the last two years developing a breakthrough technology that maintains precise vapor pressure and temperatures in cheese caves and other aging and drying and curing environments. SDI’s OEM design allows control of the environment based on one simple but important principle: The only way to control humidity is to control the temperature and the dew point.
This new system allows maintenance of consistent temperatures and relative humidity levels within tight limits.
“The technology was developed because many existing aging rooms are not capable of creating the required temperature and humidity conditions due to their fundamental design. Most refrigerant based cooling systems tend to remove excessive moisture, and this overly dry air has a negative impact on the natural food products. This dry condition retards rind flora growth in cheese and retards the aging process in general,” explained SDI President, Neville McNaughton. “For our customers this means consistent growth of surface micro flora and less growth of unwanted micro flora, lower spoilage rates, optimum aging times and increased revenues,” he added.
“Charcuterie is especially sensitive to the aging environment, and the dynamic nature of the SDI controls addresses issues of batch variability and seasonality,” said McNaughton.
SDI’s environmental control system was developed by McNaughton and engineer, David Sandelman, to create a flexible, affordable system that works with chilled water or refrigerant. The controls are designed to be easily installed in both new and retrofit applications, and come pre-programmed with a simple touch screen that displays the environmental conditions at all times. The SDI control can replace up to three conventional controls and comes equipped with auxiliary outputs for a supplementary humidifier and heater when required.
SDI Controls are designed to work in any food processing environment that requires accurate and reliable control of temperature and relative humidity: cheese aging rooms, meat aging/curing rooms, cutting rooms, production spaces, chocolate/candy kitchens, storage coolers, sprout rooms/greenhouses and animal fodder rooms. A basic retrofit control kit starts at approximately $4,000. The Controls technology interfaces easily with other SDI equipment solutions such as stainless steel air handlers, specialized coils, and air management systems with food grade, anti-microbial fabric duct.
About Sanitary Design Industries
Sanitary Design Industries is the manufacturing and equipment division of CheezSorce. Both companies are owned by Neville McNaughton.
SOURCE: Sanitary Design Industries
