Development and Evaluation of the Operational Parameters of a Rotary Oven

Developing an efficient rotary oven that is capable of addressing the issue of long baking duration and uneven heating distribution during baking could aid in encouraging indigenous use of the oven by small and medium scale bakeries in developing countries. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the performance of a rotary oven. Taguchi experimental design was used to investigate the influence of oven temperature (160, 180, 200°C) and oven rack speed (0, 10, 20 rpm) on the physical properties (baking time, mass, surface area, specific volume and density) of bread produced from the rotary oven. The baking capacity and efficiency of the rotary oven were 16 kg h-1 and 94%, respectively. Investigation showed that baking time ranges from 20 to 82 min, bread mass (884 to 925.7 g), surface area (1050 to 1370 cm2 ), specific volume (2.36 to 3.70 cm3 g -1 ) and density (0.25 to 0.39 g cm-3 ), respectively. The optimum baking time (20 min) was achieved at 200°C oven temperature and 10 rpm oven rack speed. The oven could be adopted for both domestic and industrial production of bread and other bakery products. Keywords: Bread, oven temperature, oven rack speed, taguchi, rotary oven