Monitoring temperature and humidity during the transportation of food

Customer Requirement

A chocolate manufacturer experienced problems when complaints came in from customers regarding spoiled chocolate products. There were three risk areas this could happen, during manufacturing, transportation or when the chocolate was with the retailer.

Equipment

• DT500 data logger
• Memory card
• DeLogger 4 Pro
• CEM (Channel Expansion Module)
• Sensors: RTD; Thermocouples; Humidity Sensors

dataTaker Solution

Since both temperature and humidity are critical to the well-being of the chocolate it was necessary to closely monitor both during all processes. The manufacturing process was without fault. Next step was transportation. A comprehensive temperature and humidity profile was put into place for the whole truck. Both RTDs and thermocouples were used to monitor temperature with the same number for humidity. All were connected to the battery powered dataTaker DT500 which had additional memory cards installed to store the gathered data. The data logger was programmed to take a continuous series of readings at set intervals. The data was easily retrieved and downloaded to a computer where the information was displayed in spreadsheet format and analysed using Excel software.

In a related exercise, the company also used the dataTaker data loggers to monitor the conditions within individual cardboard boxes being trucked interstate by contractors. It was clear from the data gathered by this means that some contractors were conserving fuel by turning off the petrol driven refrigeration units for hours at a time. This practice was quickly stopped.