Industrial cleaning of working equipment
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Industrial cleaning of working equipment: principles, applications and innovations in food industry TECHNOLOGY FOR THE FOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRY

CLEANING SOLUTION TEAM Industrial cleaning of working equipment

The dawn of automatic equipment cleaning machines Types of cleaning machines Evolution of cleaning machines in the food industry Main cleaning parameters Contact time Impact strength Solution temperature Chemical action of detergents Number of cleaning steps (stages) The different types of contaminating residues Nature, shape and features of the material to be cleaned Cleaning water quality Filters’ efficiency Presence of pre-treatments (if any) Age of contaminating residues Equipment that requires sanitisation (sorted by industry) Standard technical specifications of our industrial...

CLEANING SOLUTION TEAM The dawn of automatic equipment cleaning machines For over twenty years the food industry has had the problem of changing the methods used for cleaning and sanitising all equipment used in the production processes, i.e. stopping washing smaller equipment by hand and larger equipment with high pressure hoses and instead starting using machines especially designed and built for this purpose. Inox Meccanica, at that time had been operating in the food industry for years already; the company understood the needs of this sector and started working with the companies to...

Types of cleaning machines The cleaning machines differ one from each other for the loading/unloading equipment and the modalities with which the equipment and machines are positioned inside the machine; some machines load and unload equipment from the same side and work in a non-continuous way; these are called “booth-entry” machines and the equipment they clean is housed in special baskets to keep it steadily fastened during cleaning; If the equipment to be cleaned is largesized (trolleys, racks, frames) it is kept in place via special guides that prevent it to move during cleaning. The...

CLEANING SOLUTION TEAM Evolution of cleaning machines in the food industry The cleaning machines produced in the early 80s had excellent performances in cleaning the fresh produce contaminating residues (slaughtering, fresh sausages and salami making, cleaning of fresh products crates) but were often inadequate for complex (i.e. polymerised, dehydrated, charred/carbonised or modified by heat in any other way) contaminating residues . It is obvious that different contaminating residues and different surfaces require different design features: longer cleaning times, pumps with higher...

Main cleaning parameters Equipment washing, as for all processes, depends also on many parameters, such as: 1. Time of contact between contaminating residue and detergent. 2. Impact strength of water jets, which depends on the flow rate and the water pressure on the surface unit. 3. Solution temperature. 4. Chemical action of detergents. It is obvious that the results of the cleaning and sanitisation of equipment depend on such factors as: • Number of cleaning steps • Nature of contaminating residue • Nature and features of the material to be cleaned • Cleaning water quality • Filters’...

CLEANING SOLUTION TEAM Main cleaning parameters Contact time This is a key parameter for accurately sizing cleaning machines and processes. Cleaning machines have been designed to reduce cleaning times and improve efficiency and consequently contact time must necessarily be limited and not exceed a few minutes for booth entry machines (which handle only a few pieces) while in tunnel-entry or belt machines it shall be cut down to a few seconds. Luckily, other parameters (impact strength, detergent efficiency, cleaning temperature, pre-treatments) may have to be adjusted to make up for the...

Main cleaning parameters Chemical action of detergents Although water is the key component of the cleaning process, the detergent's chemical action is necessary for several reasons including: • Wetting the substrate and consequently reducing the interface pressure (surfactants' action) • Alkalinising the bath to facilitate the surfactants' action • Sequestering Ca and Mg ions that could precipitate thus damaging the equipment as well as the cleaning machine. • Increasing the water's power to solubilise the main contaminating residues (increasing solubilisation speed). • Increasing the...

4.5 CLEANING SOLUTION TEAM Main cleaning parameters Number of cleaning steps (stages) The difficulty of removing contaminating residues depends on their nature, the heat generated modifications undergone by the residues during the processes as well as the nature of the surfaces; for this reason it is often necessary to introduce additional cleaning stages and steps. If partial drying of the equipment is required, a specific stage is added in which air is blown on the cleaned equipment (last part of the tunnel or final stage of the booth cleaning). Different stages of cleaning are required...

Main cleaning parameters Contaminating residues from fresh produces. The type and nature of contamination has a massive influence on the cleaning process that often requires two separate stages: • An alkaline stage which removes chiefly the organic residues (fats, oils, starches, carbohydrates, proteins...) • An acid stage which dissolves and removes inorganic residues and “compound” crusts, scales and residues (organic residues trapped within saline and inorganic structures) Contaminating residues from fresh produces. The mechanical cleaning process further complicates itself when the...

CLEANING SOLUTION TEAM Main cleaning parameters It is therefore important to choose suitable detergents and descalers, compatible with these materials and containing corrosion inhibitors. Food processing and production equipment are usually made of washable and almost detergent-impervious materials; The most common material is AISI 304 steel and other steels that can be cleaned and sanitised using almost all the detergents and sanitizers available (trolley, small wagons, baskets, pots, tools, moulds...) However, it is not uncommon to come across equipment made of aluminium or alloys, still...