HEATEC

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

FOR THE FOOD INDUSTRY
WELCOME TO HEATEC ®

About Heatec
Our offices and manufacturing facility are located in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. Astec Industries bought the
company in 1977 and it became known officially as
Heatec.
In the beginning our products were primarily for
heating and storage of asphalt used in the road
construction industry. It soon became apparent that
our heaters were well suited for industries unrelated
to road construction. Consequently we make heaters
and storage tanks for many other industries, includ-
ing the food industry.
Our company has grown steadily over the past 35 Heatec offices and manufacturing plant 2012.
years. We now have over 200 employees, including
an engineering staff of approximately 28 engineers
and designers.
We offer extensive parts and service. We have eight We continue to add new shop bays. Our most recent
qualified service technicians that provide on-site bay has new blasting and painting booths with built-
service for our products as well as similar prod- in man lifts that enable us to apply a finish to our
ucts made by others. And we provide live technical products second to none.
support by phone. Our stock room has an inventory
valued at $1,000,000.

PRIMARY USES

H
EATEC MAKES a variety of
Heat cooking vessels
(cookers, fryers, etc)

Heat source for heat

heating products for use

Sanitary Cleaning
Heat cooking oil

& purification

in the food industry. Key HEATEC

exchangers

Packaging
Blanching
directly

products and their primary uses PRODUCTS

are shown in the accompany-
ing table. Each product listed is
available in a variety of configu-
rations.
Process heaters •
Thermal fluid heaters • • •
Water heaters—direct contact •
Water heaters—helical coil • • •
Vaporizers • •
Steam generators • • • • •
PROCESS HEATERS ®

Our process heaters are designed to directly heat

a fluid product as it flows through the heater. The
product may be liquid or gas. Process heaters heat
products directly whereas thermal fluid heaters heat
media (thermal fluid) that in turn heats products or
other equipment indirectly.
We offer a variety of process heaters with fired burn-
ers for use in the food industry. Most are vertical
heaters with helical coils made of stainless steel.
The helical coils of vertical heaters can be cleared
completely after use by simply draining the liquids
under the force of gravity. Moreover, the small
footprint of vertical heaters require much less floor
space than other configurations.

A process heater we built for

food processing. It has a helical
coil made of stainless steel. It
heats vegetable oil that cooks
food products.
THERMAL FLUID HEATERS ®

Heatec specializes in thermal fluid heaters, especially those

with helical coils heated by fired burners. The burner heats heat
transfer fluid (thermal fluid) that circulates through the heater
coil and through heating coils in other equipment.
A single heater can heat multiple pieces of equipment connected
in one or more thermal fluid circuits. Moreover, heating of each
piece of equipment can be controlled independently by valves
that modulate the flow of the fluid through the equipment.
Heaters with two-pass helical coils are the most popular. They
burn a variety of fuels and have high thermal efficiencies that
conserve fuel. Heaters are also available with three-pass heli-
cal coils or with serpentine coils. Outputs range up to about 75
million Btu/hour.
We make our own coils for thermal fluid heaters. So we can con-
figure the coils for your heater to provide a flow rate that closely
matches your required flow rate without compromise.
The heaters can be either vertical or horizontal. A significant
advantage of vertical heaters is their small footprint so they can
fit into small floor spaces.

This is an example of a thermal

fluid heater that can be used
by food processors. It is skid
mounted in a horizontal con-
figuration and has a two-pass
helical coil. It has an output of
one million Btu/hour. Except
for its expansion tank the
heater is fully assembled on a
single skid.
It has a convection section with finned tubing for increased efficiency that equals
or surpasses that of some three-pass heaters. Unlike a typical three-pass heater,
it has a much lower radiant flux rate and easy access to the coil for maintenance.

This thermal fluid heater heats

special presses that print
food packaging. Two econo-
mizers enable it to achieve
a thermal efficiency of 91.5
percent (LHV). One preheats
the thermal fluid. The other
preheats the combustion air. It This vertical heater is an example of a thermal fluid
is designed to fit into a building heater that can be used by food processors. It has
with very limited height. a two-pass helical coil and a fired burner. It can be
equipped with a stainless steel coil if required.
WATER HEATERS ®

Direct contact water heaters

Firestorm® is the brand name of our most popular
water heater. It is a direct contact water heater that
heats water on-demand and provides a continuous
supply of instant hot water at a constant temperature.
A key feature is its on-demand water heating that
eliminates the need for water storage tanks.
Special versions of the Firestorm heater are available
with NSF certification for food processors. The heater
is certified in accordance with NSF/ANSI Standard 5.
This certification means that all parts of the
heater that contact the water it heats are lead
free. The heater is entitled to bear the
official NSF seal of approval.

Firestorm heaters have

extremely high thermal
efficiencies: up to 99 percent.
They raise the temperature of
water up to 185 degrees F at
flow rates from 13 to 1200
gpm depending on heater size.
Their exhaust stack tempera-
tures are close to incoming
water temperatures.

Helical coil water heaters

The Firestorm® water heater pictured here has an output
Our helical coil heaters that heat thermal fluid can of 6 million Btu/hour. These heaters are available with
also be used for heating treated water. They are virtu- outputs ranging from 0.75 to 36 million Btu/hour.
ally the same as thermal fluid heaters, except they
heat water as it is pumped through its helical coil to
an external storage tank or reservoir. Unlike a ther- And unlike a direct contact heater, the water is not
mal fluid heater, the water does not normally recircu- exposed to burner gases and can be heated to tem-
late through the heater. peratures much higher than 185 degrees F.
VAPORIZERS ®

Vaporizers are similar to thermal

fluid heaters. However, they heat
the liquid heat transfer media and
change it into vapors.
These vapors transfer heat to all
heating surfaces in heat exchang-
ers more uniformly than possible if
the media remains a liquid.
Some processes require the ex-
treme uniformity of temperature
that can only be achieved using
heated vapors. One processor
claims that a temperature varia-
tion of one or two degrees can
affect the flavor of their product.
Heatec vaporizers are usually in
a vertical configuration. We can
build them either with serpen-
tine coils or with helical coils.
Although some users prefer ser-
pentine coils because they can
be built to API specifications, the
helical coil works just as well or
even better.

Our vertical serpentine heater/

vaporizer at a food processing
plant of a major food producer
in Springfield, IL. The unit
occupies only a small ground
area.
STEAM GENERATORS ®

Food processors usually have a variety of uses for

steam. Using a steam generator instead of a boiler
as the source of steam has important advantages and
eliminates the need for a boiler.
A steam generator produces steam by heating water
with thermal fluid from a thermal fluid heater. The hot
thermal fluid circulates through tubes of the steam
generator, heating water surrounding the tubes and
converting it into steam.
Unlike a boiler, tubes in the steam generator never
get hotter than the thermal fluid flowing through them.
This minimizes explosion hazards associated with
boilers. It also eliminates the need for a boiler tender,
who must be present when a boiler is in operation.

Heatec steam generator rated at 10,000 pounds/hour. Also available in other sizes as needed to meet customer requirements.
We make our own coils. This is a capability that most an optimum fluid velocity. Our coils are built to ASME
heater manufacturers lack. We can intertwine multiple code. (Certification is optional.) Stainless steel coils are
helical coils to create additional fluid circuits to achieve optional.

Use of helical coil heaters to heat cooking oil is discussed in an article

on our website. To download a copy of this article please type the fol-
lowing information into your web browser:
http://www.heatec.com/literature/Articles/CookingOilArticle_sm.pdf

HEATEC
H E AT E C , I N C . an Astec Industries Company
5200 WILSON RD • CHATTANOOGA, TN 37410 USA 800.235.5200 • FAX 423.821.7673 • heatec.com