INNOVATION
FoodSpace and chair of FCSI Technology Committee Joseph Schumaker FCSI. “Not just Flippy the robot, but actual workhorse robots to help with BOH flow by chopping tomatoes, removing a pan from the oven or assembling a sandwich or a salad. These technologies have existed since the 1950s but the tipping point in foodservice will be camera technology that can see and translate a task into robotic action.”
Cold-side and climate change Paradigm shifts have also happened on the cold side, the blast chiller being the latest game-changing technology. Now used in commercial kitchens across the world, it has become an integral part of the food preparation process for any business that needs to reheat pre-prepared foods. Since the invention of the refrigerator
in 1842, blast chilling is the most radical reinvention of the cooling and food storage process. By rapidly cooling to a low temperature, it pushes food quickly through the danger zone – between 8˚C and 60˚C – in which harmful bacteria might proliferate, meaning it has a huge impact on food safety.
As well as guaranteeing food
safety, the speed of the cooling process results in the formation of smaller ice crystals, so texture, flavor and color are better preserved and there is little loss of nutritional value. Blast chillers, however, consume a lot of energy, so results must be balanced with financial costs and an impact on energy efficiency. Energy consumption is a key concern in refrigeration, and in back-of-house equipment in general as John Thomas FCSI of Sangster Design in Australia is keen to point out.
“In the future, fridges will use
more environmentally friendly gases to reduce emissions and they will be sealed systems, so won’t leak as much
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Automation can take on the mundane and repetitive tasks in the kitchen
because there are no valves,” he says. “Maintenance costs will also come down, and they will run better for longer, and at lower cost. Win, win, win and win.” Thomas pioneered the use of
R290 refrigerant-grade propane for commercial refrigeration units, due to its low environmental impact and nominal global warming potential (GWP), though it was initially a hard sell. “We saw lobbying against those fridges, which are now in use everywhere,” he explains. “Some manufacturers even looked for a ban on them. Now, we are looking at other kinds of refrigeration using the magnetocaloric effect. These fridges could use no gas at all.” According to some studies, magnetic
refrigeration could reduce energy use by 30% and requires no refrigerant. The principle behind it was discovered back in 1881. It relies on the property of exotic materials including gadolinium and dysprosium, which heat up when exposed to a magnetic field and cool down when it is removed, which creates the
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