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Poultry Processing Cooling

Immersion Chill Tank Temperature Control

USDA cold-chain requirements start at the chill tank

IMMERSION CHILL TANKS

Chill Water That
Holds Under Load

USDA cold-chain requirements start at the chill tank - water temperature there sets how fast product gets safely below the danger zone.

Immersion chill tanks bring poultry product down to holding temperature immediately after processing, and USDA regulations set specific time-and-temperature targets for that cooldown. Holding chill tank water at the required temperature under a continuous product load - not just at startup, before the tank has absorbed any heat - is what keeps a line in compliance.

Chill tank heat load is continuous and predictable in a running plant, which makes it a good fit for an Advantage central chilled-water loop sized to the plant's full processing rate rather than a chiller per tank. Tank water at 32-40°F sits well below the 48°F plain-water floor, so the chiller side of that loop runs on glycol through a heat exchanger.

  • Immersion chill tank water temperature drives USDA cold-chain compliance
  • Continuous plant-wide load - a strong fit for a central chilled-water loop
  • Glycol extends the range where colder-than-water temperatures are required
Poultry chilling room with immersion tanks and spiral chiller conveyor

Because a chill tank interruption stops the line, redundancy and turndown matter as much as raw tonnage here - talk to us about your processing rate and required chill tank temperature and we'll help size the loop with the plant's actual duty cycle in mind.

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Sizing Poultry Chill Tank Cooling

Poultry chilling is a cold-chain-compliance load first: immersion chill tank water has to hold a target temperature that pulls carcass temperature down within a regulated time window, on a continuous basis through a full processing shift. The tank's water volume, product throughput and target temperature together set the required tonnage.

Because chill tank water is displaced and refreshed continuously as product moves through, the load behaves more like a steady industrial process duty than a batch spike - but the Advantage chiller still has to be sized for peak throughput, including any startup period where tank water is being pulled down from ambient.

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  • Chill tank volume and water turnover rate
  • Target chill tank water temperature
  • Product throughput (birds/hour or lb/hour)
  • Startup pulldown time requirement

What Poultry Chill Tank Cooling Requires

32-40°F Tank Water

Continuous Turnover

Cold-Chain Compliance

Startup Pulldown

TYPICAL RANGES BY CHILL STAGE

Chill Stage Leaving Fluid Temp Load Profile Notes
Pre-chill / initial immersion 36-40°F Continuous, high volume Bulk carcass temperature reduction
Final chill tank 32-36°F Continuous, steady Holds cold-chain compliance target
Tank pulldown at shift startup 32-40°F High peak, short duration Sized separately from steady-state load

Birds per hour, tank volume and the regulatory chill-time target are what size the tonnage; the figures above only bracket it.
Call and talk it through with an engineer: 1-805-484-2992.

Turning birds per hour into chill tank tonnage

Through pounds, specific heat and the drop the tanks deliver. 10,000 birds an hour at about 5 pounds is 50,000 lb/hr. Carcasses enter near 100°F; chilling them to 40°F, using 0.8 for specific heat is 50,000 x 0.8 x 60 = 2.4 million BTU/hr, about 200 tons - past the indoor Titan's 180 tons and near the top of the OACS line's 210, so most plants split it across paralleled modules. The common error is using water's specific heat of 1.0, which overstates the load by a quarter.

Often, and the arithmetic is simple. Melting a pound of ice absorbs 144 BTU, and a ton of refrigeration is defined as melting 2,000 pounds of ice in 24 hours. A plant using 30,000 pounds of ice over an 8-hour shift is buying about 4.3 million BTU of cooling - an average of 540,000 BTU/hr, or 45 tons. A chiller loop sized to that does the same work continuously, with no deliveries or ice handling on the floor. One catch: holding tank water at 33-34°F through a heat exchanger needs a glycol supply below freezing, so plan a glycol unit, not a plain water chiller.

Yes, and it is often the load nobody measured. Chill tanks overflow continuously to keep water quality, and every gallon of makeup water arrives at supply temperature. At 50 GPM of 60°F makeup cooled to 34°F, that is 500 x 50 x 26 = 650,000 BTU/hr, about 54 tons, on top of the carcass load. Meter the makeup flow seperately, and log its temperture in August, not January. A plate exchanger that lets cold overflow precool the incoming water can take a large share of that load off the loop.

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