British process and automation expertise has helped one of Japan’s largest food producers to cut white sauce production time by 83%, reduce cleaning between batches because there is no burn-on residue and minimise energy consumption.

Food producers are constantly striving for greater efficiencies because of the highly demanding nature of the food industry.  A new British product promises to dramatically reduce cooking/processing time for soups, sauces and ready meals whilst at the same time improving quality.

The PDX Reactor from UK company Olympus Automation can mix, heat, induct powders, pump and homogenise simultaneously with unequalled performance. The PDX Reactor is essentially an extremely advanced steam injector cooker. It can be used in the production of water based liquid food products such as soups, sauces and ready meals.

Using the PDX Reactor 1000kg of béchamel sauce can be made in 17 minutes, or 1000kg of Tomato Sauce in 6 minutes with no requirement to pre-slurry ingredients such as starch or gum, there is also no requirement for external homogenisation.

At the heart of the PDX Reactor application lies Mitsubishi Electric UK’s  FX3 series compact PLC, which is responsible for many of the critical processes including the monitoring and control of the temperature and steam. The FX3 is a third-generation compact PLC; developed for the international market, it has high speed and high capacity. It can be customised and expanded with up to 10 add-on modules to include special functions, network communications and system expansion up to 384 I/O.

HMI improves operator control

The PDX Reactor application used a Mitsubishi Electric HMI (Human Machine Interface) to provide visual information and controls for the operator. This is in effect an entire control console on a single screen, enabling an operator to manage and if necessary to intervene in the application by very easily changing the process data parameters. The HMIs are easily switched from language to language, so are ideal for use in machines designed to be used in multiple locations around the world.

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