Measuring air velocity in your industrial bakery ovens with the SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor from Reading Thermal enables you to monitor actual conditions inside your commercial bakery oven and get the critical information you need to maintain optimum process control and improve the quality of your products.
Reading Thermal, a Reading Bakery brand, has been focused on measuring and understanding the commercial baking process for more than 25 years. We manufacture and support the SCORPION® 2 Profiling System, the “brain” of our measurement system and a powerful diagnostic tool that has become an industry standard for improving your proofing, baking, cooling and freezing processes.
How to Measure Oven Air Velocity
Oven air velocity refers to the flow rate of air inside an oven. It’s an important measurement because, along with other parameters like heat flux, humidity and temperature, it influences the coloration, texture, firmness, and baking time of your products.
In a radiant oven, the airflow comes from the moving conveyor, the exhaust system, and natural combustion air currents. In a convection oven, the airflow comes primarily from the air distribution plenums. In this case, airflow is particularly critical because it directly controls the amount of heat delivered to the product.
Bakers can measure and record oven air velocity with the SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor. This sensor array delivers a precise picture of airflow patterns inside the oven from side-to-side and end-to-end, and the number of sensors will vary with the width of the conveyor. Data is collected at product level as the array travels through the oven.
To gather data, the Sensor Array is connected to the SCORPION® 2 Data Logger and is run through the process at product level, measuring air velocity from all directions. Then, the SCORPION® Software (SV8) analyzes the results.
This process and analysis allows you to spot airflow differences between baking zones, concentrated air velocities on isolated parts of the conveyor, and unwanted air currents at the entrance or exit of the oven that result in inconsistent baking.
Another innovative Reading Thermal solution is the SCORPION® 2 Temp+Airflow Sensor Array, which is designed to simultaneously profile temperature and airflow across the width of large tray and grid conveyor ovens exceeding 2m (6.5′). The sensor array contains nine Temp+Airflow sensors spaced evenly across the length of an aluminum bar. The sensor array comes in three sizes to match the most popular bread oven conveyor widths.
Measuring air velocity in your industrial ovens with Reading Thermal’s SCORPION® 2 Air Velocity Sensor can provide the data you need to maximize quality and reduce waste. Contact us online, or call our headquarters in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania at (610) 678-5890 Ext. 2 to learn more about our oven profiling system.