Cleaner, Efficient Technology at the Heart of Production

Fristam Pumps’ version of the twin screw is its FDS PD pump. “We’re able to eliminate a bunch of different pumps and use this one for pumping product and also as a CIP supply pump,” says Dan Johnson, application engineer for Fristam. “This pump can cover both high and low speeds and thick and thin product.”

GEA just launched a new twin screw pump in March as part of its Varipump line, which are pumps with a high degree of flexibility for optimum adaptation to individual customer requirements. The GEA Hilge Novatwin provides flexibility for a wide range of applications, enabling production and cleaning with one pump by variable speeds up to 3,000 rpm.

CIP’ability

The GEA Hilge Novatwin enables production and cleaning with one pump by variable speeds up to 3,000 rpm.Photo courtesy of GEA.More pumps and valves are being geared toward improved CIP capabilities. PSG’s Wilden Saniflo HS Series AODD pumps, for example, not only result in a cleaner manufacturing process, Solfelt says, but also a more efficient one.

For a plant that’s switching more often from mango to orange juice, say, or Coke to Diet Coke to Cherry Coke, speed of cleaning can be a considerable factor. “The effectiveness of the cleaning is fundamental,” Jones says. “But if you can do it faster, you can save tens of thousands of dollars an hour.”

Faced with significant cleaning efforts with each change in yogurt flavor, Noosa Yoghurt took a good look at its total downtime cost (TDC) and realized the savings it could achieve improving its cleaning process. For example, fruit line piping must be cleaned after each fruit flavor in a 40-minute changeover process that repeats 12-13 times per week. In addition to the TDC for CIP procedures, Noosa was losing hundreds of pounds of product each week there and in its honey-recirculation line and blending skid. This, along with the water and chemical rinses, amounted to a potential savings of thousands of dollars each month through better product recovery and system cleaning.

One way that Noosa looked to improve the evacuation of its product lines and increase product recovery was through check valves, which are used to push residual product downstream at the end of a process while preventing product backfill during cleaning. Nick Hansen, Noosa’s improvement engineer, set out to find a sanitary air blow check valve to do the job.

The downside of standard 3-A certified air blow check valves is that they must be cleaned out of place—a manual cleaning step that adds costly downtime and introduces the possibility of human error. Because food, dairy, and beverage products are intended for human consumption, sanitary standards for production are high, and a great deal of attention must be focused on valve cleaning. But every manual step added to the cleaning process creates a potential failure point.

Noosa Yoghurt switched to a TrueClean CIP’able valve from Central States Industrial to improve cleaning efficiency.Photo courtesy of Central States Industrial.The answer ended up being the TrueClean CIP’able valve from Central States Industrial. It’s the only sanitary air blow check valve approved by 3-A Sanitary Standards for cleaning in place. With an air blow check valve that wouldn’t need to be disassembled to clean, Noosa could increase cleaning efficiency while also maintaining product integrity. With increased levels of automation as well, Noosa operators could cut 40 minutes of work during a flavor changeover down to 45 seconds. (See “Noosa Yoghurt Cuts Downtime, Product Loss With Valve Upgrade” at https://bit.ly/NoosaCIP to learn more.)

Clean pumps

When designing a new pump, Alfa Laval’s engineers think about cleaning as much as they think about its ability to pump, Jones says. Not only does the pump need to be able to pump food through, it needs to be cleaned efficiently as well. “When you put cream through a pump or peanut butter, it’s going to get everywhere in that pump where it can go,” Jones says. “When you flood water through that pump, those won’t necessarily go through the same parts.”

Cleanability can be a tricky subject, though, especially in the U.S., where cleanability standards are lacking. “There are lots of shades of gray,” Jones says. 

The most applicable standard for the dairy industry, for example, is 3-A, but most people look to that as a minimum standard because it doesn’t have a cleanability test. “After you’ve pumped milk all day, you have to clean the system. And the pump is one of the hardest things to clean,” Jones notes. “With thin milk, you could have a relatively sanitary design, and you’ll still be OK. But in a more viscous environment, that starts to get tough.”

In the U.S., manufacturers have a tradition of PD pumps that have to be taken apart and cleaned by hand, Jones says. That won’t fly anymore, though, and customers are looking more and more for CIP’ability.

Cleanliness, of course, is of utmost important in food and beverage production. “These types of plants always strive to keep their processes as hygienic and sanitary as possible, knowing that any lapse in quality or taste will have far-reaching negative effects for consumers and the manufacturer itself,” Solfelt says.

PSG has noticed a considerable uptick in the number of customers upgrading to higher levels of cleanliness, including sanitary construction, such as clamped ports, stainless-steel components, and advanced surface finishes, Solfelt says.

Another recent advance from PSG is the Wilden Pure-Fuse Diaphragm, which has a one-piece design that eliminates trap areas between the outer piston and diaphragm where bacteria can grow.

Running hot and cold

Hygienic pump manufacturers are seeing a substantial increase from the food industry in sales for hot oil, such as in fryers, according to Garner. Where industrial pumps used to be the norm, customers have started demanding cleaner sanitary pumps for this application, he says. “We had to open up some of the clearances and provide special elastomers that can handle the temperatures.”

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s also more demand for cryogenic capabilities—in the -50 to -60°F range—for hemp oil and CBD oil. This also takes special seal materials and elastomers, Garner says. “As soon as we started getting requests for that, we came out with a special seal design, material-wise, that can handle low temperatures, as well as special elastomers,” he says, explaining that Ampco worked with its seal supplier to develop the new seals. Customers with cryogenic processing demands were trying to use pumps with standard seals, but they were failing all the time, he adds.

Overall, considerable focus has been put on seals—how long they last, how easy they are to change. Customers want more maintenance friendly seal changes, Garner says, such as frontloading seals that can be changed without removing the piping or body of the pump. “The pump is the heart of that process room. When that pump goes down, everything else shuts down,” he states.

Looking at the cost of ownership—not just the purchase price, but the price of that pump over its lifetime—85% of that comes down to energy efficiency, according to Jones. A significant chunk of the remainder is maintenance. It can make a big difference in cost of downtime if that pump can be repaired faster. “If a pump goes down, it could cost a plant $10,000 an hour on a pump that only costs $2,000,” Jones notes.

One feature of Alfa Laval’s LKH line is that one seal fits over 16 different pump sizes. A really big plant that has lots of different pump sizes only has to stock one seal for repairs. “They’re quick to change, only one size, and it’s also a very long-lasting seal,” Jones says.

Some customers want to get rid of the elastomers in their pumps altogether. If an elastomer O-ring, for example, gets cuts into a batch of hotdog meat, that whole batch will have to be tossed—an expensive proposition. In this case, more customers are compelled to demand metal O-rings, particularly in the meat industry, where they are pumping meat slurries. If anything happens with that O-ring, the metal is more detectable and can be removed, Garner notes.

In one case cited by SPX Flow, a processor was using a PD pump to transfer yogurt containing seeds. That pump had an O-ring seal that was quickly wearing out as seeds accumulated around it, meaning the process had to be stopped while the seal was replaced, impacting productivity and cost. “The pump was changed for a Universal 3 Series PD pump, which uses a flat, profiled gasket instead of an O-ring,” Sinutko says. “This stopped the seeds from accumulating, reducing maintenance overheads, increasing productivity, and providing a solution that was cleaned more thoroughly during CIP cycles.” 

Here are some other stories about pumps and valves that you may want to read:

Switching out pumps solves pet food processor’s dilemma

French winery upgrades its traditional winemaking technique

Priming the pump: How to select the right pumps

Plenty of room for pneumatic technology in Industry 4.0

In a time of considerable uncertainty, a constant you can count on is PACK EXPO International and Healthcare Packaging EXPO. PACK EXPO this November is taking place, either as a live and virtual event combination, or an all-virtual event. Learn more at https://www.packexpointernational.com.