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Claranor launches pulsed light sterilisation tech in beverage industry
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Friday, 09 December, 2016, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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With commercial activity starting in 2010, Claranor has launched the pulsed light sterilisation technology in the beverage and dairy industries. This technology enables an extremely rapid surface sterilisation without chemicals, with low energy consumption and operating costs, and limited capex.
Claranor has installed less than 200 cap and cup sterilisation units throughout the world on PET lines as well as on linear cup fillers, adapted to ultra-clean and ESL requirements.
Despite having the Claranor chemical-free solution for cap sterilisation, owners of PET lines had no way to decontaminate preforms without chemical sterilants.
In collaboration with 1Blow, a French manufacturer of blow-molding machines, Claranor has performed a series of microbial testing demonstrating a high killing rate on preforms while flashing the preform just after the oven.
On the growing markets of juices, soft drinks, bottled water and low carbonated soft drinks, products are mainly filled on PET ultra-clean-filling lines, where the packaging decontamination is performed with H2O2. The reference micro-organism for these low pH products is Aspergillus brasiliensis, a mould.
Claranor has inoculated half-litre transparent preforms with Aspergillus brasiliensis at levels less than 10E4, and checked the decontamination obtained only in the oven of a blow-molding machine, only with a pulsed light treatment and after combination of heat of the oven and pulsed light.
The test has been performed on a half-litre preform format as it reflects the current global trend for small format on the beverage market, driven by consumer demand on health and convenience.
The results are following: Results in mean log reduction Oven heating (115-120°C) Pulsed light 2 flashes IR + PL (115-120°C) 2 flashes Preform neck + body 2.1 2.0 4.2 In this combination of treatments, there is no effect of heat on the neck that remains cold, but where pulsed light is the strongest. On the contrary, the effect of pulsed light is total on the internal and external surface of the neck, and the rays arriving inside the body increase the effect of the heat.
The industrialisation of this process is accessible, as the pulsed light reflector can continuously and instantly treat preforms passing from the oven to the blowing machine, with only 50cm straight section. The treatment can reach 100.000bph.
The external surface of the preform is also decontaminated, body + neck.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have shown great interest in this innovative patented solution previewed at the Petnology conference in Nuremberg and presented in Bangkok at the Aseptipak forum.
This innovation opens the way to 100 per cent chemical free ultra-clean lines with the Puls’Combi PET: preform and cap sterilisation with pulsed light.
Chemical-free, compact, with a reduced TCO, the Puls’Combi PET is adapted to high-speed lines and perfectly suitable with the PET material. This combination brings to large brand owners simultaneously a contribution to their sustainability policy as well as significant savings.
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