FJB Systems' team of specialists have had papers published in many technical journals and publications, as well as having presented papers at many conferences. Below you will find a selection of some of these papers from over the years, which are all downloadable in either PDF Acrobat Format with full diagrams or as plain text files without diagrams. The 'Projects' area of this web site includes a number of case studies of projects which may also be of interest:

Designer Trends - Planning an Abattoir - Meat Trades Journal - June 2008

Refrigeration and Carcase Chilling - Meat Trades Journal - October 2007

Work Completed on Newmarket Coldstore - ACR Today April 2007

Coldstore Insulation Panel Degradation - Causes & Solutions - FJB Systems LLP 2006

Experiences of the Economics of Setting up Meat Plants in the Middle East - IFFA Conference 2004

Large Screw Compressors in the Refrigeration Industry - Institute of Mechanical Engineers September 2003

The Successful Maintenance of Large Scale Slaughter Floors - Meat Processing Global Magazine May 2003

Cold Storage On-Site Electrical Generation & Waste Heat Recovery - Cold Storage & Distribution Federation Directory 2002

Rapid Carcass Chilling Plants compared to Conventional Systems - International Institute of Refrigeration 2001

A New Approach to Monitoring Energy and Optimising Cold Storage Costs - Transport Cold Storage &Distribution Magazine 2000

Frost Heave - a case study - FJB Systems In-House Seminar 1999

Economies of Meat Chilling and Freezing - International Institute of Refrigeration 1997

Economical and Effective Cold Storage Design - International Association of Cold Storage Contractors 1996

The Preparation and Transportation of Meat Products with particular Emphasis on Chilled Meat Shipments - Intermodal Conference 1996

Viability of Small U.S. Pork Packing Plants - Feasibility Analysis and Proposal - National Pork Producers Council, Situation Analysis 1995

Design of Carton Air Blast Freezing Systems - International Institute of Refrigeration 1990

Buffalo Boning in India - FJB Systems In-House Seminar 1989

Optimisation of Refrigeration and Heat Pump Designs for Meat Processing Plants - Institute of Refrigeration 1989

Plant Layouts, Collection & Selling of Edible Meat By-Products - Edible Meat By-Products, Advances in Meat Research, Volume 5 1988

How to Drain off 4.5megalitres of contaminated water a day... without upsetting Mother Nature - Journal of the Institution of Engineers Australia 1976


Abstracts:

Designer Trends - Planning an Abattoir (2008)
Setting up an abattoir in the UK is not an easy endeavour. This article looks at the key barriers to entry and solutions.

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Refrigeration & Carcase Chilling (2007)
This article discusses current issues associated with carcase chilling in the UK.

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Work Completed on Newmarket Coldstore (2007)
This article details the newly completed 6 million cubic foot Turners coldstore at Newmarket and the services that FJB Systems provided in order to enable its economical, efficient and well-designed construction.

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Coldstore Insulation Panel Degradation - Causes & Solutions (2006)
The heart of any coldstore is its insulation envelope. Over time poor initial construction design can lead to insulation panels becoming ice-logged with disastrous consequences to a store owner. This paper looks at the principal causes and solutions based on FJB Systems' many years of surveying such problems.

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Experiences of the Economics of Setting up Meat Plants in the Middle East (2004)
This presentation was made at the 2004 IFFA conference in Frankfurt. It details FJB Systems' experiences of the economics of an imported sheep slaughterhouse and how its feasibility and business sensitivities are affected by exchange rates, livestock prices and other key variables.

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Large Screw Compressors in the Refrigeration Industry (2003)
This paper deals with how the choice of compressor within a refrigeration system can influence the system efficiency, the choice of units available and the advantages and limitations of large industrial screw compressors.

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The Successful Maintenance of Large Scale Slaughter Floors (2003)
Large Scale Slaughter Plants can be dogged by continuous maintenance problems that can cause severe financial penalties to a business. This article looks at the common causes of breakdowns and what can be done to ensure a smooth running slaughter floor.

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Cold Storage On-Site Electrical Generation & Waste Heat Recovery (2002)
With ever increasing electricity costs imposed on the cold storage industry, this paper looks at the options available to serious cold storage operators who wish to generate their own electricty. In particular, for cold storage sites located adjacent to large steam users, self-generation is particularly favourable.

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Rapid Carcass Chilling Plants compared to Conventional Systems (2001)
For many years the question of speed chilling of recently slaughtered carcasses has been a consideration for any cost conscious slaughterhouse operator. Thirty years ago most meatworks chilled their carcasses over a two day period which allowed for a flexibility of operation and simple low capacity refrigeration plant. The usual question nowadays is to chill all carcasses within a one day period at a faster rate to improve shelf-life, reduce working capital and cut back on building costs. However, chilling rates and performance varies significantly from plant to plant. This paper outlines the principles and economic considerations regarding carcass chilling and in particular the economic and practical comparisons between conventional and rapid carcass chilling.

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A New Approach to Monitoring Energy and Optimising Cold Storage Costs (2000)
Energy consumption in cold stores represents approximately 20-30% of operating costs. Therefore fully understanding how these costs are split between each of the stores is of fundamental interest to any operator. This is fairly straightforward to implement for commercial packaged refrigeration but poses a much larger problem with centralised industrial refrigeration plants. This paper outlines how FJB Systems have developed and had installed a system to do just this on a large UK cold storage site.

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Frost Heave - a case study (1999)
Frost Heave is the freezing of the sub-soil under a cold store floor which create forces so large that the concrete sub-floor and working slab are pushed upwards. Extreme cases of this can lead to disastrous structural failure of the building as the foundations are undermined. Less severe cases involve operational difficulties and safety hazards. This paper looks at one case of frost heave - why the frost heave started and how it was possible to rectify the situation at minimal expense.

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Economies of Meat Chilling and Freezing (1997)
Carcass chilling and carton blast freezing are important issues for the serious meatworks operator. A well thought out and scientific design of an abattoir's carcass chillers and their associated refrigeration system can result in substantial cost savings, through reduced carcass shrinkage. This paper looks at the correct way to achieve effective carcass chilling and the capital cost penalties associated with the alternative solutions available. Carton blast freezing is also looked at and the economies of this topic are covered.

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Economical and Effective Cold Storage Design (1996)
The effective design of cold or chill storage sites requires a clear overall understanding of all the specialist disciplines involved - structural, civil, refrigeration, electrical and insulation panel envelopes. FJB Systems provides a one-stop fully integrated service offering all of these skills in-house. This paper details some of the fundamental decisions that the serious cold store operator must take when deciding exactly how a new store should be designed and built.

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The Preparation and Transportation of Meat Products with particular Emphasis on Chilled Meat Shipments (1996)
We now have a trade in vacuum packed and controlled atmosphere packs throughout the world. The evolution of this trade has relied most significantly upon the improved processing methods in the meat works prior to shipment. This paper concentrates upon these slaughterhouse and meat preparation technologies that have made this trade possible.

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Viability of Small U.S. Pork Packing Plants - Feasibility Analysis and Proposal (1995)
Within the US, hog prices have been on a downward trend for many years and few predict that this situation will improve in the long term. Hence with smaller margins available to Hog Farmers there has been much discussion about the farmers themselves entering into the meat processing sector to vertically integrate their business. This paper looks at the viability of small versus large packing plants and the general problems that must be confronted and advantages that are available to potential market entrants.

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Design of Carton Air Blast Freezing Systems (1990)
Air freezing of cartons has been a feature of the international meat industry for many years. Despite this and the fact that much practical research and development has been carried out some 30 years ago, the refrigeration industry is still designing freezing tunnels that are ineffective and do not provide the end user with what he wants. This paper summarises the information now available from this development programme and also compares the economic factors relating to one day as against two day turnaround cycles, as well as automatic tunnels versus batch freezing units.

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Buffalo Boning in India (1989)
With ever increasing electricity costs imposed on the cold storage industry, this paper looks at the options available to serious cold storage operators who wish to generate their own electricty. In particular, for cold storage sites located adjacent to large steam users, self-generation is particularly favourable.

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Optimisation of Refrigeration and Heat Pump Designs for Meat Processing Plants (1989)
Meat processing plants have both steam and refrigeration requirements, along with individual energy requirements for hot water. The purpose of this Paper is to integrate these three particular technologies and to analyse the most suitable overall plant to optimise its total energy requirements, bearing in mind that there is considerable waste heat available from the refrigeration plant and the abattoir by-products department, while there is a large, relatively low temperature, heat requirement necessary to produce the factory steriliser and wash down hot water.

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Plant Layouts, Collections & Selling of Edible Meat By-Products (1988)
Before becoming involved in any aspects of marketing by-products, it is important to define the product and have some understanding of processing techniques together with the economic effects that edible meat by-products have on the viability of meat production and processing as businesses, and thus, their importance. This paper details the main considerations for by-products processing and how the size of meat processing plant affects the process layout.

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How to Drain off 4.5megalitres of contaminated water a day... without upsetting Mother Nature (1976)
The Riverstone Meat Works, situated near Windsor about 50 km north west of Sydney, completed a partial rebuilding of its works in 1974. The work included a new modern abattoir, big enough for a daily throughput of 750 largecattle, and 6000 small stock (sheep, pigs, calves), rendering, boning and by-products factory, and associated freezer and cold storage. The portions of the old works retained were: a fellmongery for scouring wool; a textile mill for processing the wool up to the “tops” stage, ready for spinning; a margarine factory; a cannery; and a small goods and bacon factory.
The daily volume of wastes from the new works and old factories combined was estimated to be 4.5 Megalitres (1 million gallons). Even after preliminary treatment by fine screening through a 40 mesh screen, and dissolved air floatation to recover material for by-products, the B.O.D. of the waste was in the vicinity of 800 to 1000mg/l – about four times the strength of ordinary town sewage. This short article details how with the use of a simple cost effective ponding system, the effluent from the plant was satisfactorily treated.

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