Heating 1,000 Unpackaged Chicken Eggs per Hour
Problem statement
In recent years, avian influenza has had a significant impact on farms across the country. In particular, large-scale farms producing more than 100,000 eggs/day can incur significant losses when infected. When these farms experience an outbreak, they must coordinate with the USDA, as well as local and regional communities, to clean their facilities of the virus and return them to safe operation. Part of this process is to decontaminate and dispose of unpackaged eggs in an environmentally safe manner. Based on the logistics of the large-scale farms, decontamination of unpackaged eggs must occur at a high rate (~10,000 eggs/hr) to balance continued egg production with limited storage space. Previous work 1) determined that forced hot air was the most viable decontamination solution and 2) developed a basic conveyor type system with potential to process eggs at a rate of 1,000/hr. The goal of this year’s project is to redesign and build the conveyor heating system using an off-the-shelf propane heater, such as those found at Home Depot (see Mr. Heater: https://www.homedepot.com/p/MHC60FAV/316812709). The team will need to determine appropriate modifications to the heater so that it can be controlled safely by farm workers, redesign the current recirculating-air furnace to accommodate the propane heater, and design stackable egg trays that maximizes the number of eggs while maintaining adequate channels for the flow of forced hot air. The project has significant support from the USDA, included a dedicated graduate research assistant (Ethan Burton) to aid in the design and build.
Team members
Justin Maina – communicator
Luca Bertschinger Merolli – admin
Logan Wehrli – facilitator
Tyler Zurawski – accountant
Client
Michael Cheadle
UW – Mechanical Engineering