Chemical-free bug killer is hot stuff

Rentokil has launched a groundbreaking chemical-free bug killing system for food processors that drastically cuts the production downtime involved in using traditional pesticides.

Entotherm eliminates insects through the application of dry, transferrable heat to any food manufacturing space.
One of the benefits of the process is that it can treat any area of infestation, including hard to reach parts of machinery and wall cavities. “You can heat up a whole building or just one production line,” said Rentokil technical director Savvas Othon. “So you can isolate one line while people work on the others.”
“Before you could only treat where chemicals could penetrate, creating a lot of downtime for the factory. With Entotherm you can get at the inner workings of conveyors.”
Any equipment treated using the Entotherm system is safe to use again within a few hours and Rentokil says there is no risk of machine or structural damage. All life cycle stages of pests, from eggs to larvae to adults, can be eradicated with just one treatment.
“With pesticides, you have to wait for insects to crawl over them. With this you don’t even have to wait for eggs to hatch,” said Othon. “Pesticides also require one treatment, then another, then another, so you often never really get on top of an infestation. With this, one treatment alone is effective.”
He said Entotherm was more expensive than conventional pesticide systems. But it required far less follow-up, was much more effective in eliminating pests and so was probably cheaper or at least equal to standard systems in cost terms in the long run.
Entotherm works by delivering a heated, liquid syrup through insultated pipes to heat exchangers that are placed inside the infested treatment zone.
The area is heated to a temperature of 56°C for one hour. This temperature kills all insects, including cockroaches, biscuit beetles and flour beetles, by denaturing proteins inside their body and disrupting the waxy layers on their exoskeleton, causing dehydration. The process is monitored remotely using a laptop.
The system took three years of extensive testing to develop in partnership with The Revival Group.