Employee safety is always number one. That’s why fryers meet and exceed fire safety and other regulatory standards. For many reasons, including insurance and corporate safety guidelines, some snack producers want to go beyond what is required.

“Many of them now place fryers in separate rooms,” noted David Moline, president, Moline Machinery. “There are a lot of reasons to do that, not just from an air-quality perspective. Doing so allows them to implement access controls, such as physical guarding around our fryer, to make sure that somebody can't touch a hot surface.”

Topos Mondial places removable heat shields on the top sides of its kettles.

“These heat shields act as a jacketed wall,” said Reilly Rodriguez, design engineer. “If you think of the glass door on your oven, there’s an inner and outer piece of glass with air gap in between. That’s what keeps the outer glass cool and safe. That’s the same thing we do with our heat shields. They’re aerodynamically designed to allow air in between the kettle and the heat shield to keep that heat shield cool.”

Specifically, he added, the fryer’s hood pulls cool air underneath the shields to cool them while the kettle remains hot. Connected to the fryer by chains, they can be folded down, enabling the company to clean them as well as the open-frame components of the kettle during a sanitation period.

In general, safety relays and controllers become more readily available, said Daniel Luna, director of processing equipment, PPM Technologies. The company uses redundant temperature sensors tied into the heating system, whether it is immersion style, remote heat exchanger or thermofluid.

“As the final defense for fryers, new technologies in fire suppression systems have also been developed compared to past systems, for example, water misting systems,” he said.

Nicola Menardo, president, TP Food Group North America, noted its Tecnofryer’s TEC fryers integrate state-of-the-art safety systems. The main changes affect sensors and electronics, such as temperature sensors for the heating elements and PLCs that provide overall system control.

Many equipment manufacturers have taken a holistic look at conditions in and around the fryer to ensure there is absolute employee safety.

“Areas of focus have been preventing volatiles that are generated during the frying process from exiting the fryer using improved exhaust techniques that protect the internal and external environment,” said James Padilla, Heat and Control’s director of product development. “Improved insulation designs offer better energy efficiency while creating cooler frying rooms and minimizing hot spots on the external surface and the addition of systems to prevent hot oil and water coming into contact with each other. Employee and product safety is paramount when considering fryer/equipment design.”

Today’s equipment is also designed with a focus toward a prescribed risk assessment method that starts with failure mode or HAZOP analysis of what could cause potential harm, noted Matt Asplund, application engineering manager, engineering, Heat and Control.

“The results are then rated and ranked to focus protective measures on the most important hazards, while addressing all hazards appropriately,” he explained. “In recent years, there has been a big push toward eliminating personnel access to hazards through better equipment design as well as automation. This has the side benefit of reducing the human element of uncertainty.”

This article is an excerpt from the May 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Frying, click here.