Joy Cone Senior Capstone Team

                                                                                Project : Improving Efficiency of the Turnbull Oven

                                                  Project Overview                                                    

Background

The Joy Cone Senior Capstone Team has a rather unique project, to perform an energy audit with respect to electricity and natural gas consumption of an oven called the Turnbull, which produces cake cones.  The task is to implement an energy audit on one particular oven and give feedback on how to make the device more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. This project is to focus on one particular oven that produces roughly 2,000,000 cake cones a day at peak capacity.  The oven rotates 360º and produces cake cones every ninety seconds continuously.  It has several 480V motors that help the cake cone molds make the complete cooking cycle through the oven.  In order for the cones to bake a light brown color and have a very light airy crispy texture, a constant temperature of 300º is maintained.

At the facility located in Flagstaff, Arizona, there are twenty cake cone ovens. The ovens have been revised extensively over time.  Updated mechanical drawings are available, while some wiring diagrams are incomplete.  Each oven has an aluminum metal insulated covering that shields the burners and cone mold (three cones per mold). When in full operation the insulating covers are cool to the touch.  The entire Joy Cone facility is pressurized twenty-four hours a day to facilitate the baking process.

During the summer months the heat produced from the ovens is released into the atmosphere and is considered a valuable waste. The Joy Cone Company would like to reuse this heat in a more beneficial manner to save money on their natural gas and electric bills. During the fall/winter seasons a majority of the heat is collected sent to a heat exchanger where it is used to heat the entire facility.

Objectives

The objectives of this project are to:

1.      Calculate/Measure the current energy (electricity and natural gas) consumption of the Turnbull oven used in the Joy Cone facility.

2.      Calculate/Measure the amount of energy (electricity and natural gas) lost or wasted in the Turnbull oven.

3.      Formulate ways to make the Turnbull oven at the Joy Cone facility more energy efficient by reducing the amount of natural gas and power consumption by at least five percent.

 System Diagram

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 Last Updated: April 20, 2009