The automated process for cleaning pipes and tanks in the food & beverage industry, known as clean-in-place or CIP, is crucial to manufacture safe products. But it can be a time-consuming and inexact process. Now Endress+Hauser has a conductivity sensor that can monitor build-up to reduce the time spent on cleaning and ensure maximum safety in a highly regulated industry.
A significant amount of production time in the food & beverage industry is spent cleaning the plant. This guarantees the production of high-quality and hygienic products for the end user. To avoid the risk of contamination, many production processes in the food sector take place in closed systems, so CIP is used. This means that pipes and tanks don’t have to be disassembled, but it also makes it difficult to know exactly how the CIP process is progressing. In many cases, the duration of the clean is determined by evaluating past data rather than looking at what is currently happening in the process. To prevent insufficient cleaning, the cleaning time is often increased.
Safe and repeatable
Now there is a way to minimise this unproductive time without risking product safety or breaching regulations. The Liquitrend QMW43 reliably and continuously measures the thickness of product build-up when it occurs in tanks and pipes. The additional conductivity measurement also provides information about the cause of the build-up, i.e. whether it is caused by product residue or cleaning agents. By connecting the device to the control system, the measurement data is available in real time and is automatically documented. If the sensor shows no more build-up, it can be concluded that the critical points have been successfully cleaned. These insights into the process mean that cleaning time can be kept to a minimum without having to worry about product quality.
Cutting lab time
The Liquitrend QMW43 can also help to cut lab time by continuously measuring in line the products’ conductive and capacitive electrical properties. Quality parameters can be set in the control system to immediately identify products that don’t meet the required standards without the need for an additional lab test.
Field of application
The Liquitrend QMW43 can be used to measure liquids or pastes, whether the media is electrically conductive or not. Due to the unique use of both conductive and capacitive measuring cycles, the device automatically detects the most accurate measuring mode and uses it automatically. This means that the device can be used without any prior knowledge of the type or strength of the contamination or the medium. The Liquitrend meets all food safety regulations and has been constructed with food-safe and FDA-compliant materials.