Two Tips To Follow When Having Air Conditioning Fitted in Your Food Processing Plant
Here are two tips to follow if you're having commercial air conditioning installed in your food processing plant.
Consider the effect it will have on ingredients that need to be heated
If the contents of the foods you produce need to be cooked, melted or heated in any other way, you'll need to consider the effects the new air conditioning system will have on these ingredients. For example, in the areas of the processing plant where the heated food is being transported via conveyor systems, you might need to position the air conditioning vents so that none of them are blowing cold air directly towards any part of the conveyor chute or belt. Alternatively, if you don't have many employees who need to work in these areas for prolonged periods (and therefore, don't have to be overly concerned about keeping this area cool enough for their personal comfort), you could simply fit fewer air conditioning vents in this area so that the temperature doesn't get very low, even when the system is running at full throttle.
Additionally, if there will be vents in the area where recently cooked food is temporarily left to sit out, you should bear in mind that the presence of new air conditioning vents in this area will speed up this cooling process. As such, you might need to advise your employees to transfer this food to your coolrooms sooner than they use to.
Ensure your employees know how to recognise that the air conditioning system requires attention
It's also sensible to educate your staff members about this new air conditioning system so that they can recognise when it requires maintenance work or repairs. Whilst you should make sure the system undergoes periodic maintenance, even if none of your employees report issues with it, telling them what things they should watch out for will mean they can let you know about any issues with the system before it has any serious effect on the room temperature in your processing plant and begins to cause issues (such as the temperatures rising so high on a hot day that your fresh salad vegetables wilt before they can be processed).
Telling them, for instance, to watch out for fluid (such as water or refrigerant) leaking out of any of the system's units and instructing them to report drops in airflow from the vents or unusually high humidity levels to you will enable you to quickly call a repairperson and get these issues fixed.