Optimizing Heat Transfer of Cooking Surfaces Using Temperature Control

Overview

It can be difficult to efficiently heat a cast iron griddle for cooking pancakes. When heating a griddle, people often let the cook surface get too hot, burning pancakes or other food. They often respond by turning it down, resulting in the surface becoming too cold for cooking. Since it takes a long time for the cast iron griddle, as well as many other pans, to change temperature, it is difficult for people to judge how the cook surface is behaving. This problem is an example of heat transfer; the energy transferred between bodies as a result of changes in temperature. The temperature of the heat source over time is the easiest way to control the temperature of the cook surface. I hypothesize that there is a way of achieving the proper temperature for cooking that is faster than setting the burner to the desired temperature for the griddle and waiting for it to come to temperature. Specifically, I propose that a temperature profile consisting of an initial high temperature followed by a low temperature before being setting the temperature to the desired cooking temperature would result in a shorter time to heat the griddle. When attempting to calculate the transfer of heat, I discovered that the change in temperature through the thickness of the griddle was almost instantaneous compared to the change across the horizontal surface of the griddle. With that in mind, I reduced the heat transfer problem to a single dimension. I created a numerical model of the heat transfer of a griddle using Python. The model was then used to simulate almost 700 unique temperature profiles. These profiles included various temperatures for the high and low segments for various time durations. From these profiles I determined a specific temperature time profile which could be further analyzed using finite element analysis and tested in a physical model. I tested this profile and compared it to heating the griddle with a constant temperature. These tests proved that the specific temperature time profile used was faster at heating the griddle than constant temperature. This profile reduced the time to heat by 50%. The heating time of the griddle dropped from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.

Awards (1)

• Category Award: HM

Competition history

• CSEF 2023 Applied Mechanics & Structures · Entry S0319

Resources

• CSEF published award list ↗
• CSEF published award list ↗
• CSEF published award list ↗
• CSEF public showcase (Internet Archive capture) ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Engineering projects
• CSEF Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2023 project