#filtafry

While it may seem obvious to incorporate visual inspection of your equipment into your maintenance procedures, it is often not utilized properly.  Visual inspection by people who are experienced with fryer operation and maintenance is an extremely useful tool for avoiding catastrophic failures, oil spills, and longer equipment life.  Some of the things to include in a visual inspection include:

  Close inspection of welds for cracks.  Cracks in welds can occur from thermal stress, particularly if the welds were improperly made, or if excessive thermal stresses are applied such as putting cold water into a fryer that was drained while at cooking temperature.  Weld cracks are more often the result of stress placed on the fryer from either impact (beating the fryer), missing support for one of the legs creating a twisting force on the fryer, dropping or impacting other objects during moving or installation, or installation of the fryer where other equipment is pressing or vibrating against the fryer.

Inspection of heating tube exteriors for cracks, warping and dents.  This is one of the items that has the greatest potential for catastrophic results.  We have seen several of these failures where the fry cooks had no concern about the indicators or potential for failure.  Particularly in fryers where there is a coating of carbon (black build up) on the burner tubes, the ability to identify these problems is severely limited.  The catastrophe comes when fryer oil leaks into the burner tube, build up, and ignites during a heating cycle.  The oil can drip out of the front (burner end of the tube) and ignite both the oil that is dripping, as well as any built up oil, lint, and other combustibles that may be on the interior of the fryer or on the kitchen floors.  A dent is an indication that the burner tube has had some external force acting on it and needs to be looked at very closely for cracking.  Warping in the surface of the tube usually indicates that there has been an unbalanced force on the tube.  These can be from irregular heating of the tube from carbon build up, quenching with cold water, or forces on the fryer frame such as twisting from improper support. While a crack can be seen in burner tube surfaces that can be seen from the top of the fryer while the fryer is empty, clean and dry, we often see indicators of a cracked burner tube while the fryer is in operation.  When a fryer that is being heated, and is not cooking food has bubbles coming up through the oil, there is a problem with the fryer.  Bubbles during heating can indicate crud in the fryer oil, such as old food, and oil that has broken down significantly and these bubbles often remain on the surface of the fryer oil.  Bubbles seen during heating can also be an indication of a crack in the burner tube, and the bubbles are burnt gas, and partially burnt oil coming up through the oil.

Evaluation of flame color and interior of burner tubes.  The flame in a gas fired burner should be primarily blue in color, with the end of the flame being orange/red.  If the flame is mostly orange/red, the gas mixture is too rich, or not enough air is being mixed with the gas before it enters the burners.  When gas burns rich, a part of the carbon in the gas is not burned completely and builds up on the interior of the fryer and chimney as soot.  This soot both clogs the flow of gas/flame through the burner tubes and acts as an insulator on the inside of the tube.  The fryer does not heat properly, and the food does not cook properly particularly in times when the fryer is cooking back-to-back batches of food.  In addition to looking at the flame color, and interior of the burner tube, when the gas and air mixture is too rich, you can often see a soot film on the surfaces behind the fryer (it it is near a wall) and on the exhaust hood. 

Inspection of thermocouple and high temperature limit sensor.  The two silver tubes that are mounted to the sides of the burner tubes, or extending through the front or rear wall of the fryer bin, are temperature sensing devices.  One is the thermocouple which is used to set and maintain the temperature of the fryer during operation.  The other is a safety device intended to cut the gas off and stop the fryer from overheating and getting the oil to flashpoint.  In the fryers where they are mounted on the sides of the burner tubes, the problem comes when the thermocouples are allowed to hang in the fryer without being held in their mounting clips.  The thermocouples can catch on fryer baskets or other items that are pulled out of the fryer and be damaged.  A damaged thermocouple can shut down a fryer requiring that the fryer be drained and repaired.  Another issue that comes from the thermocouples hanging free in the fryer is that if the thermocouples drop down toward the bottom of the fryer, the temperature of the oil above the burners rises.  In every fryer there is a ‘cool zone’ below the burners.  We usually see an 80-100 degree difference in oil temperature between the top of the fryer and the bottom.  As the temperature regulating thermocouple drops toward the bottom of the fryer, the cooking temperature of the oil rises.  As the high temperature limit sensor drops down in the fryer, its ability to protect the fryer from overheating the oil is reduced. 

  Some of the issues that restaurants face when implementing a visual inspection system for their fryers are that the often the person who sees the fryers empty, and usually is responsible for cleaning them and is not familiar with fryer maintenance.  In some cases, this person does not work with the fryers on a daily basis.  This lack of familiarity with the equipment that they are looking at limits their ability to identify issues before they become operational problems.

  In cases where the fryers are not cleaned to a bare metal surface every time, some of the visual inspection problem indicators are covered up with the grease and carbon build-up.  The interior surfaces of a fryer are not supposed to be orange or black when you put oil into the fryer.  Even fryers that are heavily used.

  The FitlaFry service can eliminate the need for boiling out fryers and leaves the fryers looking like new-used equipment.  The interior surfaces of the fryer are cleaned to bare metal, and the corners and weld areas are scraped clean.  This allows our fryer management technicians to provide our customers with a thorough visual inspection during every visit.  In addition to this, the temperature control of the fryer is checked during each visit prior to draining and cleaning the fryer.  Any issues that are found during our service is reported immediately to the kitchen staff, and recorded on the customer account detail tracking forms.  Contact your local Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions franchise owner to learn more about the FiltaFry service and to schedule a free demonstration of the service in your kitchen, all you have to lose is the dirt and grime that is on your fryers.

For many who operate deep fryers, there is a grease bin out behind the restaurant.  As frequent news articles have detailed, these are a target for thieves who want to use the oil to run diesel engines.  However, as these photographs show, there is another potential issue that comes with placing a grease bin outdoors.  The potential to be cited by the state department of environmental protection for water pollution. 

Probably the greatest potential problem that a restaurant grease bin presents is to pollute storm water runoff which leads to streams, rivers and lakes.  The pictures shown here were not staged, and many of the used oil bins are left open and uncovered.  In addition to the oil that is spilled around a grease bin, since oil is lighter than water, when the bin fills with rainwater, the oil begins flowing out and into the storm drains.  In some jurisdictions, strong rules are in place to restrict the potential for this type of pollution, and as is often the case with laws, we are all one good disaster from having a new set of rules imposed on us to deal with pollution from used vegetable oil.

Filta provides the FiltaBio service where the used oil is removed directly from the fryers and taken away from the restaurant.  This eliminates the need for a dirty, smelly, vermin attracting grease bin behind the restaurant.  It also eliminates the need to clean the area around the grease bin, which is a larger issue for restaurant operators who are leasing space or in planned developments with high standards for cleanliness.  The used oil that Filta removes is converted into bio-diesel and reduces the impact on the environment so that we all benefit.