In natural cheese, life begins at 40. At least this is the temperature at which the aging process can occur. However, with winemaking, if the temperature conditions aren't right, aging won't happen the way it should.
Cheese, a major manufacturer of natural cheeses and other dairy products, has earned a reputation as one of the nation's premier brands of cheese. To ensure better temperature conditions for successful aging in the automated warehouse, the company has deployed more than 30 battery-powered data loggers for various parts of the equipment's block storage area.
"At Tillamook, we're natural cheese, not processed cheese," said Jim Hoffman, maintenance technician at the Tilamook plant. "It's not easy to make natural cheese, but the finished product is worth it. Care and part of the job, the process is making sure the storage environment stays at a consistent temperature of 42 degrees. If it's a little too hot, aging happens too quickly. If it's too cold , no aging will occur.”
Intermittent cooling is actually a problem. Changes in airflow have occurred depending on whether the storage area is empty or full, which in turn creates areas that are too cold for proper aging. Therefore, there is a need for continuous temperature monitoring to identify cold regions and then take corrective actions.
Hofmann first considered retrofitting the temperature sensors U12-011/UX100-003, UX100-011 with conventional storage areas. However, a more serious look at this method suggests installing hardwired temperature sensors at many different points in the area would be very time consuming and expensive. "Because the warehouse didn't have sensors set up initially, adding them afterwards would take months."
Hoffman finally chose the HOBO® H8 data logger U12-011/UX100-003, UX100-011 from Onset. These are compact, battery-operated devices for continuous monitoring of temperature, relative humidity, light intensity, and other environmental conditions. These special loggers also have external sensor inputs, expanding the range of measurement options and applications. As a standalone device, the HOBO logger features onboard processing and memory, can store tens of thousands of readings, and can operate for a year on a single battery. According to Hoffman, logger workers represent a quick and cheap solution to a critical climate control problem.
"The great thing about using battery-powered data loggers is that we can deploy them immediately and start monitoring temperatures in all the various areas that we care about," Hoffman said. "We're all set in hours, and the loggers start reading every six seconds."
After a day of collecting data, Hoffman retrieved the data using the HOBO U-DT-1. The U-DT-1 is a pager-sized device that can be offloaded and stored from each data logger, then brought back to a computer where the collected data can be plotted and analyzed using HOBOware Pro software. "We were able to retrieve data from all loggers in less than an hour."
Looking at the results on the screen, Hoffman quickly discovered that there were 4 temperature differences between the upper and lower areas of the storage area. To bridge this gap and even create temperature conditions, Hoffman installed two 20-inch high-volume fans to air circulate the lower areas of the storage area. Effectively, this creates an "air curtain" with an even temperature of a steady 42 degrees.
Ever since HOBO loggers U12-011/UX100-003, UX100-011 were installed in 2001, they have been free from running issues, and one logger has even survived a major drop. "Once, while I was riding on a warehouse crane attached to the logger U-DT-1, I lifted the logger from a height of 70 feet," Hoffman explained. "We took the satellite to the ground and tried to find the missing Recorder. I could find the case two and a half away, but we couldn't find the brain on the little circuit board. After about 15 minutes of searching, we gave up. Five days later, at During a routine inspection of the crane, we found the "brain" of the Recorder living in a groove in the crane. The Recorder didn't miss a single detail."
Hoffman has deployed additional HOBO logger workers in the finished goods warehouse area, and has also found use in monitoring the current plant's refrigeration compressors to ensure they are operating efficiently.
