Food Radar’s addition to traditional technologies
The Food Radar® is a unique detection technology that offers the food
industry a vital extra layer of protection.
It can detect low-density materials in pumpable foods that are invisible to X-ray machines
and metal detectors, such as soft plastic, rubber, foil, wood, and fruit stones. Our customers frequently tell us how the
Food Radar has also improved the quality of their products, as it also detects unwanted food lumps in products such as
pasta, cheese, starch, and pectin.
The Food Radar can be used in many different food applications, but the most common ones are baby foods, fruit
preparatons, preserves (jam), tomato preparations, and sauces.
What makes our technology different from other technologies like X-ray, metal detectors and optical sorting machines,
is that it uses microwaves to measure dielectric differences between the normal product and deviations caused
by foreign materials.
From a food safety perspective, the Food Radar has a large advantage as it achieves outstanding results using microwaves
1000 times less powerful than those emitted by mobile phones. The microwaves enter the production pipe via eight
antennas covering all angles.
The Food Radar also detects high-density foreign materials like glass, metal and stones. The sizes will vary compared
to other technologies, depending what type of metal you compare with.
X-ray machines are also good at detecting high-density foreign objects. In some cases, they can also detect bones
as the calcium in bone blocks the X-rays. These systems can also be equipped with beams to improve detection levels.
Metal detectors have been standard in the industry for decades, but detect only metal. With coils wrapped around a pipe,
or applied on a conveyor belt, pieces of metal are detected as they move through the generated field. However,
non-ferrous metal is harder to detect, and stainless steel is even tougher because it is a poor conductor and not magnetic.
Optical sorting systems are typically cameras above a conveyor belt, where any type of visible contamination can be
removed. There are obvious limitations to this technology, such as when a contaminant is covered by a piece of
product, for example.
No detection system is ideal in all situations, but Food Radar Systems’ unique contribution to food safety is to
make many foreign materials pumped in pipes detectable and removable for the first time.