Ultrachill Process Improvement
Problem statement
Today’s meat production industry is moving in the direction of blast-freezing their pork carcasses, and one of our buildings here on campus is struggling to keep up. Blast-freezing is a method of rapid cooling intended to remove heat from carcasses as fast as possible. According to a national refrigeration engineering firm called Stellar, ‘the faster the internal meat temperature decreases, the better the meat quality is preserved’ [1]. Therefore a successful modern blast-freezer can greatly improve the safety and quality of the meat while also decreasing production times. When UW-Madison opened its Meat Science & Animal Biologics Discovery Building (MSABD) in November of 2020, it included one of these blast freezers, called the Ultrachill Chamber, so that further research could be done on this process. But despite the recent effort put into installing this chamber, the current design does not allow for adequate air flow over the pork. In fact, while typical blast-freezers have ‘an air velocity of 10 to 16 feet/second’ [2], the Ultrachill Chamber typically achieves air velocities of only about 6 ft/second. The staff at MSABD needs this process to be improved, as proper research cannot be conducted until air velocities are increased and thus chilling times are reduced. To improve the performance of the Ultrachill, our team will collect data about how the air flows through the current design, use CFD to create a model, and ultimately work towards a solution. Our solution must be compatible with the existing infrastructure, as it would be too expensive to make major changes to the existing facility. In addition to cost restrictions, all potential solutions must be food-safe and potential installations must be easily cleaned, since MSABD is a real food processing facility.
Team members
Kyle Fahey – leader
Everett Fawley – communicator
Alex Bearth – accountant
Michael Waldoch – admin
Client
Jordan Nehls
UW-Madison Meat Science