Novel Smart Testbed at WPI

Novel Smart Testbed at WPI

By Victoria Birk Hill November 17, 2022

CARD member, Reading Bakery Systems (RBS), along with Professor Yagoobi and the CARD team, have designed a novel dryer/oven testbed.  This electrically operated pilot-scale oven/dryer fabricated by RBS was commissioned on October 25th 2022. The testbed, operational in continuous as well as batch modes, includes various conventional and innovative drying modules, along with unique sensor technologies for in-situ moisture, temperature and strain measurements of the product during the drying/baking process. With the aid of experimental and physics-based data, the optimal operating conditions for a given product are determined using artificial intelligence programming. The development of this novel testbed was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.