French fries, potato wedges, potato croquettes, rösti rounds, potato slices.
Every year, Aviko produces 100,000 tonnes of these types of frozen potato products.
All products are pre-baked in large ovens with oil.
In this part of the production process, the risk of fire was not yet fully under control.
But thanks to Mactwin’s expertise and solution, this is a thing of the past.

At the production site in Lomm (Limburg), we are allowed to come and see the solution we developed in practice.
Marc Rossel, SHE Manager for Aviko’s production sites in Lomm and Cuijk, explains to us that the production of French fries quickly becomes a fire risk and that Aviko has therefore already taken many measures.
“But in some places the risk of fire is greater than elsewhere. Especially where we add an extra layer to our potato products to keep them nice and crispy,” says Rossel.
“We run a specific risk with the bin in which the remnants of this coating fall. Those leftovers are still warm and also mixed with oil. In combination with the high ambient temperature at the ovens, this residual waste can start to heat and burn over time. To prevent a fire, we were looking for a way to detect the rising temperature in the tank, i.e. the heating.”

Knowledge and experience brought together

Jeroen Helders, Insurance Risk Manager at parent company Cosun, continues: “Mactwin already has a great deal of experience with thermal detection of heating in the waste sector. Since we are dealing with a similar risk here, we called on their expertise. We have combined our knowledge of the baking process with Mactwin’s knowledge of and experience with thermal cameras. At one of our production lines, we came up with a test setup with two thermal cameras. The goal: to detect heating in the bin with residual waste. Beforehand, we were well aware of the fact that ‘first time right’ would be an illusion and that a process of testing and optimisation would follow. That has everything to do with the conditions in our production hall.”

Extreme conditions call for innovation

It goes without saying that the circumstances on site have been taken into account as much as possible in advance.
Still, there were some unforeseen things along the way.
For example, the cleaning agent used to clean the machines was found to affect the camera lenses.
For this purpose, Mactwin has developed a special, stainless steel compact camera housing in the test phase that prevents the cleaning agent from getting on the lens of the camera.
Also, the standard wall mount turned out not to be able to withstand the extreme conditions.
This was replaced by a heavier stainless steel version.
Part of the test phase was also the positioning of the cameras.
These must be positioned in such a way that there is no ‘blind spot’ and therefore any overheating is detected anywhere in the tank.

Fastest Detection Method

Jeroen Verheij, Technical Project Manager at Aviko Lomm, says that the test phase has now been completed and that the heat detection system on the first production line is running satisfactorily.
“Two thermal cameras now have a full view of the residual waste in the bin and continuously measure the temperature. The thermal images from both cameras are uploaded to screens in the operator room. As soon as the measured temperature exceeds the set threshold value somewhere in the residual waste, our operators receive a notification (an acoustic signal) and can take immediate action to prevent a fire from occurring. There is no faster way to detect overheating. Our production staff and operators are also convinced of this. Because acceptance by the people in the production process is very important, we have intensively involved all operators with the core task of ‘safety’ in this project. They have further propagated the importance of the heat detection system within their team.”