Cleaning filling, palletising and labelling machines

REQUIREMENTS

The production process in a large bottling factory in Zagreb begins with the manufacture of PET bottles. The empty PET bottles are transported over hundreds of metres of air-conveyor rails and filled with various drinks and soft drinks at large filling carousels in the clean room. The carousels are capable of filling up to 46,000 bottles per hour. The full bottles are capped and transported to the packaging and palletising area, from where they reach the customers by truck.

The machines are cleaned several times a day when production is switched from one drink to another. CIP processes are used for this. In addition, ad-hoc cleaning is carried out when a bottle breaks or liquid escapes, which happens occasionally. Finally, there is a quarterly maintenance and cleaning plan, where all machines are cleaned from top to bottom. Cleaning the filling carousels requires daily disinfection of the sensitive parts with alkaline cleaners.

Cleaning the air-conveyor rails posed a particular challenge: empty PET bottles are held by the small ring under the screw cap between two rails and driven by air blowers. The rails are slippery and allow smooth gliding as long as they are clean. However, tiny droplets containing sugar are constantly deposited on the rails, which make the rails sticky over time. This causes the bottle necks to get stuck, the bottles to bump into each other, and the entire production process to be interrupted. This leads to considerable downtime costs.

PREVIOUS TECHNOLOGY

Keeping the air-conveyor rails clean was therefore a major challenge. These rails are generally hard to reach because they are high up or run over other machines, which in some cases made cleaning quite dangerous. In the past, the rails were cleaned with cleaning foams that were later washed off with high pressure. This was labour-intensive and lengthy, required considerable quantities of chemicals and consumed 1000 litres for the clean room alone. To apply the chemical foam, extension hoses were needed that had to be pulled over 30 m and crossed the entire production hall. What was particularly unpleasant, however, was that conveyor belts, machines and the floor were flooded over a large area with a mixture of water and chemicals.

Attempts with other methods, such as hoses with water outlets at regular intervals, required enormous resources (water, energy) and were expensive, while at the same time not being very effective, and also led to considerable flooding.

OUR SOLUTION

The solution was finally presented by VesonPlast, the Croatian partner of ph-cleantec: sugar and caramel on the rails can easily be washed off with the ph-cleantec 1500 SRE units, access to the rails is no problem with a 10 m hose and a push & pull lance, and because of the generally very low water consumption of the units, there is no flooding either.

In addition, no chemicals are needed, since the units work with water heated to 95°C, with which sugar and caramel are dissolved without any problem.

The result is that

• the work is done considerably faster,
• dangerous situations are avoided,
• no chemicals are necessary and
• the water consumption could be reduced from 1000 to 120 litres.

A particular benefit is the mobility of the units: with the ph-cleantec units, the employees can follow the air-conveyor rails without any problem. With their 60-litre tanks, the units can be operated independently of the water supply. The work is thus done quickly and easily, there are no more hoses that have to be laid right across the production hall, and there is no more flooding.

After the initial acquisition for cleaning the air-conveyor rails, the customer now also uses the ph-cleantec units for a wide variety of other applications, in particular:

• Cleaning the entire palletising machines
• Cleaning the entire labelling machines and the labelling area in particular
• Cleaning the filters of the air blowers
• Cleaning the upper conveyor belts, where the conveyor belts cross machines or conveyor belts below, or where two conveyor belts lie on top of each other
• Cleaning cables that run above the air-conveyor rails or the conveyor belts
• Particularly important is that when liquids escape at the filling carousel, production stoppages can occur, but cleaning with alkaline cleaner is lengthy and often also not sufficient.

In these cases, therefore, the ph-cleantec units are used to clean and disinfect (!) the filling carousels. Tests with biological swabs have shown that after cleaning at 95°C no more germs are present. This saves time, avoids the use of chemicals and – by far the greatest benefit – avoids a stoppage of the entire production line.

YOUR BENEFITS

• Efficiency/quality: Fast and efficient cleaning of sugar, caramel and other contamination such as dust, oil and grease
• Hard-to-reach areas are easy to reach with the right accessories, which shortens working time and avoids dangerous situations
• Considerable resource savings: no chemicals, 120 litres instead of 1000 litres of water
• Disinfecting effect, since cleaning at 95°C kills germs such as bacteria, yeasts and fungi
• Mobility: Units are mobile and largely autonomous; the unit can therefore follow the rails without any problem; no 30 m hoses right across the entire production hall
• Considerably lower risk of a stoppage of the production line
• Versatility: Units can be used in a wide variety of applications
• Considerable cost and resource savings through the factors mentioned