I enjoyed this fascinating Naked Scientist podcast on how smarter industrial electrical ovens can replace gas in the food industry recently – and reduce energy costs as well as emissions.

It’s a great study in how what “everybody knows” isn’t necessarily so… For example, to reduce the energy used in baking biscuits, they INCREASE the temperature. Who would have thought???

Other techniques used to create a more efficient cooking system:

• Using real-time cameras to measure the biscuit height – which is an accurate measure of “doneness”.
• Capturing all fumes (and hot air) into a heat recovery vessel, creating hot water for the plant from the cooking process (which would otherwise require a separate boiler).

Plus “[the physics of the process] has applications right across food, also ceramics, glass manufacture, paper manufacture”.

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/net-zero-oven-revolutionise-commercial-baking