Drying Rooms ' What Are They For and What Are The Benefits?
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The purpose of a drying room is to create and maintain the ideal temperature and humidity. When using a drying room, the product should be dried or cured rapidly while still maintaining or improving its quality.
Drying Rooms For Food and Meat Drying
For example, if a drying room is used to age dry meat, a continued balance between water evaporation on the meat's surface and extraction of water from the deeper layers is required.
This is the best set up I've seen. It has improved the quality and taste of the meat and increased our yield to market as less meat needs to be trimmed during the aging process.'
Danny Neilson, Store Manager, Super Butcher Eagle Farm
It is a fine balance between the surface area of the meat not becoming too dry while maintaining a high moisture content inside the meat. Dry surfaces hinder further evaporation of moisture which leads to the meat not drying evenly and can cause spoilage.
Drying Rooms for Organic Material
When drying organic material, there is a variety of potential issues when the room's temperature and humidity is not properly maintained. For example, when drying timber, you want the room to remain warm, however fluctuating temperature and humidity can make the timber warp. To ensure the timber remains in its optimal state, the room needs to remain warm but dry.
Humiscope has several clients drying products in their commercial drying room from cannabis to flower drying. One client that dries flowers in order to extract the essence for a cosmetic manufacturer used to send the flowers wet to a freeze dry company who then sent it to the international cosmetic manufacturer.
The time between sending the wet flowers and it being freeze dried by a third party before sending it overseas, led to a loss in quality and a reduction in the amount of essence that could be extracted.
Using a desiccant dehumidifier in a properly sealed and ducted drying room removed the need for the middleman and increased both the quality of the product and the amount of vital ingredient that was to be extracted.
The dehumidifier is working very well with the weight of the product dropping ' which was the goal. The space was loaded with 50 kg of product yesterday and this morning it weighs only 36.5 kg.'
Lodi Pameijer, Owner, Top of the Range Flowers
Bacteria and Mould
In addition to preserving the structural integrity of products, a drying room also helps prevent the growth of mould and bacteria. These microorganisms thrive in moist environments, and if they grow on products such cannabis it leads to rot, botrytis and downy mildew ' severely reducing the viability of the product.
In regard to drying food products, if the room's indoor environment is not properly maintained and the area becomes damp or humid, it creates an ideal breeding ground for bacteria and other microorganisms - causing food to spoil, rendering it unsafe to eat.
Issues With Commercial Drying Rooms
Meat Drying Room
A commercial drying room for meat is designed to create a climate-controlled environment where moisture can be extracted from the product being dried. The room should remain, as the name implies, dry. However, it is storing meat, so the room also has to remain very cold ' below 4° C. This dual requirement provides challenges in combating the moisture created by refrigeration units.
Storage Rooms
In storage applications the indoor environment should be consistent with little fluctuation in temperature and humidity.
Heating is an oft used application in storage facilities. The air has to be heated more than the ambient air temperature which means that the heating device will have to run at different temperatures during different seasons. This is costly, and increases energy consumption.
What is the Solutions?
Dehumidification technology in a properly sealed and ducted room.
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Humiscope custom design and build drying rooms complete with superior quality HVAC+R systems (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration), with a special focus on dehumidification. We also convert existing spaces into fully sealed and ducted drying rooms.
We have worked with a multitude of clients, Australia wide, building and designing drying rooms. From seed storage and warehousing facilities to medical cannabis drying and meat production plants.
Please visit our website to read more about drying rooms and desiccant dehumidification technology. Also check out our Commercial Drying Room case studies and see what our clients are saying.
https://www.humiscope.com.au/dryingrooms
In this article, you'll discover why an effective drying room is so important for construction projects, why we always recommend condense dehumidification over traditional heating and how Sirius Minerals, one of the largest construction projects in the North of England, is already seeing the benefits.
Due to the nature of the job, and the fact that work is often done outside throughout the year, it's a given that protective equipment and clothing will come into contact with mud and water at some point during a construction project.
Most sites accommodate staff changing facilities by using temporary modular buildings. However, when these spaces are filled with wet kit, the use of drying racks and heating alone is neither fast nor effective enough to have clothing ready to use in time for an employee's next shift.
When a space has little to no ventilation, as is often the case when changing rooms are locked up overnight, moisture that evaporates from wet clothing and equipment will remain in the atmosphere and cling to materials before settling as condensation when the temperature drops.
As well as being uncomfortable and potentially hazardous to staff working in an already dangerous environment, saturated clothing will deteriorate at a much faster rate and soon lead to the spread of mould and mildew.
When this happens, you'll notice a strong musty odour as toxic spores are released into the atmosphere, leading to skin irritation, allergic reactions and even asthma attacks. As it spreads through the building, mould and mildew becomes harder to get rid of and begins to eat away at the structure until it becomes an unsafe environment to work from.
To accommodate staff for their large-scale mining facility, Sirius Minerals enlisted the help of Premier Modular to supply 49 modular buildings consisting of shower blocks, changing rooms, a medical centre, a large canteen, kitchens, first aid rooms, an induction room and a huge open plan office space.
To turn another of their modular buildings into an on-site drying room, a Calorex refrigerant dehumidifier was installed. The drying room is proving to be one of the most important assets in the facility, and will continue to be used on a daily basis as the workforce grows exponentially throughout the construction project.
The drying room's refrigerant dehumidifier circulates air throughout the space, lifting moisture from damp clothing and physically removing it from the air as it flows through the system. And, for even faster drying, the system converts energy taken from the room as moisture into useful heat energy. As well as cutting drying times, this efficient energy usage gives Sirius Minerals the potential to save up to 75% in heating costs compared to a traditional heating system.
How a refrigerant dehumidifier works
The process
Damp air is drawn into the dehumidifier and across a refrigerated coil
The air is cooled below its dew point, condensing the water vapour
Latent heat energy is recovered and re-used
Cooled air passes across the condenser and reheated
The warm dry air is then returned to the room at the required humidity
For both major and small-scale construction projects, an effective drying room is one of the key components to a safe and efficient working environment.
Ensure employee welfare
Stop harmful mould and mildew in its tracks.
Maintain clothing and equipment
Make sure the equipment that your staff rely on is up to the job.
Keep modular buildings in top condition
Prevent the harmful effects of humidity from deteriorating your facilities.
Reduce running costs
No more wasted energy on unnecessary heating.
Streamline productivity
Prevent hold-ups by ensuring equipment is dry and ready to use before every shift.
With freestanding and wall-mounted options, plus support from our in-house applications department, it's easy to install a Calorex-powered drying room without derailing your project timeline. Talk to our team to find out more.
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