Electric Ovens

Pre-heating, de-moisturizing, curing and drying are some of the main uses for electric ovens. Industrial baking ovens may also use electric heating coils to bake foods in the food service or packaged food supply industries.

Portable ovens, which cannot always be easily connected to natural gas or other heat generation sources, can often be easily connected to electric power sources. For applications with relatively low heat requirements, electric ovens are a good choice because of their efficient heating and low resource consumption compared to ovens that use natural gasses.

Electric ovens can heat products in a few ways. In electric natural convection ovens, heat is transferred from the heat source to the air to the product. Such ovens often feature coil designs where a coil at the bottom of an oven is heated. That heat then travels up and heats the products in the oven. There are limits to the efficiency of natural convection ovens because of the unevenness of heat distribution.

Industry researchers have identified this problem and answered it with forced convection and infrared ovens. These ovens don't have to be electric; some convection and infrared ovens burn natural gasses as their heat source. In electric forced convection ovens, a heat coil provides the heat source in the oven while a fan blows the heated air around resulting in an even distribution of heat.

These ovens are ideal for cooking large quantities of food at the same time. Infrared ovens transfer heat directly from the heat source, which is often a coiled tungsten wire, to the product without the coil-to-air-to-product transfer of heat that occurs in natural and forced convection ovens. Because of the directness of heat transfer in infrared ovens, they are very energy efficient and are becoming increasingly popular in industrial and consumer markets.