Highlights of the Food Marketing Institute show in Las Vegas last week include an innovative system to equalize temperatures within a space, a UV shopping cart sanitizer, an ozone purification system and an effective automatic handwashing system.
The "Air Pear" by Airius (Longmont, CO) is a small pear-shaped fan that directs a column of air from the ceiling straight to the floor, where it flows laterally until it hits a wall and goes back up to the ceiling. This circulation pattern equalizes the temperature between ceiling and floor, reducing the need for heating and air conditioning. Owner and inventor Ray Avedon designed the Air Pear because his Colorado manufacturing facility had winter temps of 110°F at the ceiling and 60°F at the floor, requiring the space to be heated for two hours each morning before he could use his CNC machines. After installing the Air Pears the temperature difference was just 1°F! The Thermal Equalizer is now used in grocery stores (where it eliminates fogging when cold case doors are opened), restaurants, factories, green houses. Avedon said that he's had units at a restaurant for 6 years that have had no maintenance. The website needs updating (customer list is as of 2006) but you get an idea of how the device works.
Danny Glenn (Jonesborough, TN) is in the car wash business, so it makes sense that he was asked to design a shopping cart washer along the same principles. He decided that water and shopping carts would not be the best mix in cold locations and turned to UV germicidal lights instead. In less than 7 months he had a Germ Annihilatorready for the grocers' show this past February. The East Tennessee Univ. Dept of Environmental Health tested the design with a "tram" of carts and found that it killed 99.8% of the germs on a cart, no matter how fast they went through the machine. The design is simple and safe - it's locked until an employee wants to run carts through it. It requires no water, drains or chemicals - only a power outlet. When I wondered if there was a foodservice application he said he'd been asked to adapt it for fast food trays. He also said it could be used on pallets for shipping food.
Instead of taking your dirty hands through the shopping cart wash, try the Meritech line of automatic hand washers - which also remove 99.8% of dangerous pathogens.  We've seen this company's products before, but they deserve another mention. A 12-second cycle washes hands in a germicidal solution, CHG (chlorhexidine gluconate 2%), that Meritech president James Glenn says becomes more effective on your skin over time and with repeated use. Each hand is immersed in a swirling bath with jets directed at fingertips as well as the rest of your hands. Environmentally, the devices use 75% less water and soap than traditional washing.
Meritech has recently introduced a child's version that's enticing kids to wash their hands twice! For restaurant compliance, one model reads RFID tags and stores real time reports. An employee restroom system includes an electronic signal that will turn on a light outside the bathroom if an employee leaves the bathroom without washing hands.
MVP Group Corporation(Montreal, Canada) introduced an electrolytic ozone (O3) generator for sanitizing surfaces. The GO3 Ozone Purification System uses tap water to generate ozone in a mobile cart or wall-mounted systems. Also available are vegetable washers and an ice maker system for seafood displays. Ozone's action is similar to chlorine's, but ozone acts faster - manufacturer's literature says ozone is 51 times more powerful than chlorine and 3,000 times faster at killing bacteria and other microbes. Detergent is still required to remove grease. The cart sends water out of a 6 meter hose at 22psi (1.5 bars), so it's not powerwasher strength. Since there is no pressure pump on the cart itself, you need hose pressure of 45 psi (3 bars) reaching the cart. It plugs into a 110V circuit. The Taiwanese technology has been in development since 1988 and is used throughout Asia. The carts are built at a factory in China.