THE THERMOELECTRIC VACUUM CROCK-POT AND THE AUTOMATED WORKPLACE FOR ITS RESEARCH AS A CONTROL OBJECT

The technologies of thermal treatment in vacuum are widely used in various fields of production, in particular in the food industry, but their application at farms, hotels or a for domestic purposes is limited because of the big sizes, high cost of processing equipment and complexity of its management at realization of foodstuff processing. Products, made with use of vacuum technologies, keep much more useful substances because they aren't exposed to high-temperature processing and oxidation while preparation. Development and production of the small-sized equipment for realization of heat treatment processes of foodstuff in vacuum would create technical and economic conditions for implementation of temperature processing processes of foodstuff at farms, hotels and even at home that would promote creation of new food, development of new recipes and, in general, development of the new direction in cookery. So the article describes the problem of equipment construction for the process of thermal processing of food in vacuum such as cooking jam, concentration of juices and dairy products, distillation, drying, pickling, and the possibility of building inexpensive compact vacuum unit for the implementation of these processes (crock-pot) for use at hotels, farms and even for domestic purposes. The analysis of technological schemes for energy efficient evaporation process in vacuum crock-pot is provided. The developed technological scheme of vacuum crock-pot with thermoelectric converters and principle of its operation are considered. Microprocessor block diagram of a multichannel data acquisition system consisting workstation for investigation of thermoelectric vacuum crock-pot as a control object is presented and control algorithms helping to reduce energy consumption and to increase operational reliability in implementing processes and the quality of ready-made products are provided.