issue: August 2009 APPLIANCE Magazine Cooking Appliances - 43rd Annual Report Web Exclusive: Grilling Goes Green	Share  Printable format  Email this Article  Search
by Lisa Bonnema, contributing editor It only makes sense that outdoor cooking would also jump on the “green” bandwagon. With the use of infrared (IR) technology, grill manufacturers are touting gas savings up to 50% while reaching temperatures 25% higher than traditional grills.

Like induction, IR is not a new technology but is just starting to gain the attention of consumers. TEC (Columbia, SC, U.S., www.tecinfrared.com) is most commonly known as the pioneer of the technology. The company originally patented a version of IR that used a piece of glass to disperse heat throughout the entire grill rather than just a sear burner. The result was faster, more even cooking. Since the company’s patent ran out in 2000, other manufacturers have been working on their own versions of IR.

Carlsbad, CA, U.S.-based Barbeques Galore (www.bbqgalore.com), for example, recently introduced Crossray, engineered to be claims is the industry’s most efficient IR grilling system. While Thomas Liu, vice president of product development, admits that “infrared is infrared,” the differentiating factors amongst competitors in this growing category are construction and durability.

Crossray is based on a traditional searing/IR technology, but is unique because the burners are located on the side of the grill box to reduce flare-ups and smoke emissions by up to 80%. “The burners are located behind vertically mounted ceramic tiles,” Liu explains. “When the ceramic tiles heat up, they emit infrared heat, which is angled up onto the cooking surface.”

The main design challenge was mastering the lateral mount of the burners on the sides of the firebox while still maintaining the consistent temperatures on the cooking surface. “The key to maintaining a constant temperature with the lateral mounting resides in the design of our firebox, where the firebox is molded and tooled in a shape for where the infrared burner sits at the perfect angle,” Liu says.

The burners were a challenge to manufacture because the company wanted it built to ensure longevity and durability. “The difficulty in this is the construction of the ceramic inside of the stainless casing for our burners,” Liu explains. “It took a lot of hours and days of testing to ensure longevity, but when it was finally mastered, we are completely confident that these burners will last just as long as any cast stainless burner on the market.”

And as more grill manufacturers add IR models to their product line-up, the industry can only expect the technology to get better. Liu says one possibility is creating more heat output within the IR burner, which will allow manufacturers to increase the size of the IR burner so that it alone can power the entire grill. ”Other possibilities reside in the material and construction, whether the ceramic can be changed to another material that might turn out to work better or last longer,” Liu says. “The possibilities are infinite at this moment.”