Thermal Imaging for Process Monitoring in Food & Beverage Manufacturing
Infrared Precision for Consistent Quality, Safety, and Efficiency
- 100% Line Coverage: Inspect every product, not just random sample batches.
- Early Drift Detection: Identify process variations long before they lead to out-of-spec products.
- Non-Contact & Washdown Ready: Continuous thermal inspection without slowing down production.
In the food and beverage industry, consistency, hygiene, and compliance are non-negotiable. Our advanced infrared systems offer precise thermal insights to monitor processing temperatures, detect anomalies, and ensure products meet safety standards—without disrupting production flow.
Overcome the Challenges of High-Speed Food Production
From inconsistent heating to sanitation risks and energy waste, traditional food processing methods often compromise quality and safety.
- Inaccurate heating reduces product consistency
- Risk of contamination due to uneven heating
- Costly downtime from equipment failure or poor maintenance
- Difficulty meeting regulatory compliance with outdated systems
How Our Solution Solves These Issues
- Ensures precise temperature control to maintain consistent product quality and taste
- Identifies hot and cold spots instantly to prevent undercooking and contamination risks
- Reduces downtime through early detection of equipment irregularities
- Supports regulatory compliance with accurate, automated thermal records
Food & Beverage Solutions by Emitted Energy Corporation
Proven performance in food-grade environments
FDA-compliant, non-contact inspection technologies
Customizable solutions for diverse product lines
Backed by years of infrared application expertise
Ensure Every Package Meets the Highest Standards
Let’s work together to build a safer, smarter, and more efficient food production process.
The Real Opportunity in Food Processing
Eliminate Process Variation Before Quality Drift Occurs
Process variation is the hidden enemy of yield, texture, moisture retention, appearance, and customer trust. To meet strict regulatory standards and protect profit margins, food manufacturers must deliver the exact same product, cooked the exact same way, every single time.
While traditional quality checks rely on manual spot sampling, thermal imaging process monitoring captures real-time, 100% visual thermal data across your entire production line.
Emitted Energy’s advanced thermal imaging systems deliver non-contact, real-time temperature verification and anomaly detection, capturing validating data without disrupting line speed.
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Overcome the Challenges of High-Speed Food Production
Process Stability is the Holy Grail in Food Manufacturing
Traditional measurement tools can create a false sense of process stability.
The Single-Point Probe Illusion:
If you test two chicken breasts in the same batch using a needle probe, both may register an internal core temperature of 165°F. From a food safety standpoint, both pass inspection. However, a single probe only captures one localized data point.
Comparison: Traditional Probes vs. Thermal Imaging Inspection
Inspection Feature | Traditional Probe Inspection | Thermal Imaging Process Inspection |
Coverage Area | Single-point temperature sample | 100% surface & core correlation |
Defect Detection | Misses localized cold/hot spots | Instant detection of edge-to-center gradients |
Quality Risk | Passes out-of-spec products between samples | Real-time monitoring prevents out-of-spec runs |
Root Cause Insight | None (only provides pass/fail temperature) | Identifies oven airflow, burner, and conveyor issues in food processing equipment |
The Thermal Imaging Advantage:
When you integrate a thermal camera (such as the FLIR® A70) into an automated process monitoring system, hidden variations instantly become visible:
- Product A exhibits a uniform, balanced thermal profile across its entire surface.
- Product B reveals a 20°F edge-to-center temperature gradient.
That 20°F difference directly impacts product quality and indicates systemic upstream issues, such as:
- Changing oven airflow or heat distribution
- Burner imbalance or heater element degradation
- Infeed temperature and moisture differences
- Product thickness variations or uneven conveyor loading
Thermal Intelligence for Better Business Decisions: Capturing edge-to-center temperature deltas in real time alerts operators to process drift before it becomes quality drift, which allows you to correct root causes long before generating scrap.
Beyond Monitoring Temperature: Food Product Integrity Inspection
While thermal process monitoring precisely tracks temperature, it also continuously inspects the physical presentation of manufactured food items as they travel down the line.
Emitted Energy’s ADVISOR Thermal Process Monitoring System™, powered by Emitted Energy’s proprietary ENLIGHTEN™ software, employs FLIR® cameras and automatically flags production anomalies before cooking or freezing is complete.
Food processing operators are instantly notified of process variation instances, such as:
- Overlapping or Clustered Products: Prevents undercooking caused by shielded surface areas.
- Folded or Misshapen Items: Catches localized cold spots that compromise texture and safety.
- Missing or Misaligned Items: Identifies conveyor loading issues before they cause downstream jams.
- Inconsistent Spacing: Guarantees equal heat exposure across every run.
- Overcooking: Assures moisture content is retained for weight and quality.
Figure 1: Demonstrates blob tool individual patty measurement
Key Operational Benefits:
- Detect Presentation Issues Early: Catch product overlap before products enter the oven or freezer.
- Improve Cook Uniformity: Ensure every item receives identical thermal exposure.
- Reduce Downstream Rejects: Eliminate customer complaints and expensive product recalls.
- Protect Food Processing Equipment: Spot conveyor and heating degradation before catastrophic downtime occurs.
Introducing a New Food Processing Standard: The Golden Thermal Signature
Emitted Energy introduces a smarter standard for industrial food manufacturing: the Golden Thermal Signature.
Rather than simply asking, “Did this piece pass?” The system continuously asks: “Is today’s process behaving like yesterday’s validated baseline?”
A Golden Thermal Signature represents the ideal, validated thermal fingerprint of your product during a perfectly controlled cooking or chilling process.
Establishing The Golden Thermal Signature
Step | Action | Description |
Step 1 | Establish | Quality team defines optimal baseline specifications for each product family. |
Step 2 | Integrate | Baseline is uploaded into ADVISOR™ powered by ENLIGHTEN™ software. |
Step 3 | Monitor | Real-time 24/7/365 continuous tracking against the established Golden Signature. |
By correlating external surface thermal profiles with internal core temperature checks, the ADVISOR™ system sends real-time data directly to your plant SCADA, MES, PLC, or operator dashboards and triggers instant alerts the moment a deviation occurs.
This capture demonstrates the correlation between infrared surface temperature and surface temperature.
Thermal imaging process monitoring expands quality control and output consistency by providing a continuous, non-contact method to verify that the process remains consistent between validation measurements.
Figure 3: Shows trending correlation from internal to external temperature checks on sausage links. Trial 1.b (conducted by Emitted Energy thermographer Oct. 4, 2022)
Figure 4: Shows trending correlation from internal to external temperature checks on sausage links. Trial 1.c (conducted by Emitted Energy thermographer Oct. 5, 2022)
Choose Your Thermal Monitoring Solution
Simply mounting a thermal camera on a production line isn’t enough. As a FLIR® Platinum Partner and Master Integrator, Emitted Energy combines elite thermal hardware with specialized software to deliver turnkey thermal process monitoring intelligence.
Feature | ADVISOR TPMS™ | |
System Scope | Turnkey / Self-Integrated Machine Vision | Custom Engineered-to-Order System |
Primary Use Case | Single-machine automation & spot monitoring | Plant-wide process control & complex production lines |
Core Hardware | FLIR® Smart Camera + Preconfigured Micro-PC | Multi-Camera FLIR® Array + Industrial Enclosure |
Software Engine | ENLIGHTEN™ Embedded | ENLIGHTEN™ Enterprise |
Connectivity | Standard PLC / Automation Integration | Full PLC, SCADA, IIoT, MES & Cloud Dashboards |
Key Advantage | Compact, fast retrofits for targeted equipment | Continuous 24/7/365 active monitoring & trend analytics for complex food manufacturing processes |
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)
Q1: How does thermal imaging with the ADVISOR™ system improve food safety compared to traditional probes?
A: Manual probing only tests random sample items at a single point, leaving uninspected products vulnerable to cold spots or undercooking. The ADVISOR™ system provides continuous, non-contact, 100% inspection across the entire conveyor line in real time. It instantly detects surface temperature variations, product overlaps, and equipment anomalies without slowing production or contaminating food.
Q: What is the difference between the ADVISOR Si™ and the ADVISOR TPMS™?
A: The ADVISOR Si™ is a compact, self-integrated system featuring a FLIR® camera, ENLIGHTEN™ software, and a micro-PC, which is ideal for adding thermal monitoring to standalone machinery or targeted automation cells. The ADVISOR TPMS™ (Thermal Process Monitoring System) is a custom, engineered-to-order solution designed for full production lines, offering plant-wide SCADA/PLC integration, multi-camera tracking, enterprise data logging, and 24/7 active alarming.
Q: Can Emitted Energy systems integrate with our existing plant SCADA and PLC networks?
A: Yes. Both ADVISOR Si™ and ADVISOR TPMS™ systems are built for seamless industrial connectivity. They communicate natively with leading PLC architectures (including Allen-Bradley and Siemens), SCADA systems, MES platforms, and IIoT networks to deliver real-time alarms, trend logs, and automated line controls.
Q: Are the hardware enclosures food-safe and washdown-compliant?
A: Absolutely. Emitted Energy provides custom stainless-steel, IP66/IP67, and IP69K-rated washdown enclosures designed specifically for harsh food and beverage processing environments. They protect sensitive FLIR® optics during aggressive chemical washdowns and high-pressure steam cleaning.
Q: How does the system handle different food product lines on the same conveyor?
A: Through our proprietary ENLIGHTEN™ software, operators can easily switch between pre-configured Golden Thermal Signature recipes for different product families (e.g., changing from breaded chicken patties to sausage links). The system automatically loads the correct temperature parameters, blob-geometry metrics, and alarm thresholds for that specific run.
Q: What kind of ROI can a food processing plant expect?
A: Most facilities achieve ROI by drastically reducing product scrap, eliminating recall risks, shortening batch startup times, optimizing oven energy consumption, and preventing unplanned maintenance downtime through continuous equipment monitoring.
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