Best Practices of Automated CIP Systems

Plant operations have seen savings using terminal services and thin client technologies. Food manufacturers have seen 33 percent savings in PC costs for operator workstations; 55 percent reduction in power consumption by the operator workstations; and reduction from four hours to less than 30 minutes for a technician to replace an operator workstation.

Combining the Two for More Bang. These robust controller and HMI technologies, combined with the additional instrumentation can provide production with more efficient CIP operations. Consider the following time and money-saving enhancements.

Recipe-based CIP circuits – make CIP circuit parameters part of a selectable recipe through the HMI. The parameters can include rinse and wash times/quantities, drain times, flow rate and temperature set points per step, line pressure limits per step, conductivity and turbidity limits per step, quantities of chemical additions, and alarm limits for all operating parameters.

Systems can be configured to allow these CIP circuit recipes to be created and edited by an authorized person without the intervention of a programmer. All parameters are viewable and accessible from menu screens on the HMI. Each CIP circuit recipe is then stored in the controller.

Real-time monitoring of the entire CIP process – the operator sees an intuitive view of the progress and condition of the cleaning process. Information on the HMI includes which CIP circuit is being run, current step being run, condition to complete the step, next step to run, elapsed step time, time remaining in the step, target and current flow rate, supply pump speed reference, target and actual supply and return temperatures, conductivities, pressures, pHs, tank levels, valve positions, liquid flow path, system notifications, warnings, and alarms. The operator is constantly shown when the CIP system is operating as intended and is immediately notified when wash and rinse parameters are outside allowable limits or an abnormal operating situation occurs.

Real-time trending – the operator can view at the HMI the performance of flow rate, temperatures, pressures, conductivities, pHs, and turbidity during the CIP process.

Historians for Data and Events

CIP Process Data. Traditional methods for recording ­process parameters, such as CIP temperatures, to meet regulatory compliance relied on paper-based circular or strip chart recorders. Maintenance of these electro-mechanical devices was always a top priority to insure their reliability, accuracy, and repeatability. Each chart recorder had multiple points of mechanical failure including the ink dispenser, ink supply, and pen driver mechanisms.

Today, food manufacturers are eliminating chart recorders and replacing them with historians; software-based data recorders extracting CIP process parameter values on a continuous basis from the PLC or DCS controllers. Today’s data historians can simultaneously and continuously record tens of thousands of individual process parameter points per second. Most data historians use data compression algorithms to optimize the use of mass storage either on a local computer or in the cloud.

Trends of the CIP parameters, such as temperatures and flows, can be displayed on the HMI as well as printed out for inclusion with paper CIP records. The raw data is electronically stored and available for review and analysis days, weeks, months, or years later.

CIP Event Archiving. Traditional methods for recording events, such as circuit start time and end time or target and actual wash times and quantities, have been paper records created by the operator. These manual records do meet regulatory compliance and are very labor intensive. Their accuracy and completeness rely entirely on the operator. Maintaining paper records becomes critical for traceability of the cleaning process.

Like the historians described above, food manufacturers are moving away from the paper-based CIP records and embracing software-based event archivers and report generators. Similar to the historians, the event archivers, or transaction managers, record events germane to the CIP process. Typical recorded events include CIP circuit start and completion times, wash times and quantities, operator interventions such as putting the system in “hold” or advancing a step, repeating a step, or aborting the circuit. The significant advantage to using software-based transaction managers in lieu of paper records is the critical event data is automatically captured via the process controllers and HMIs then stored in a relational database such as Microsoft’s SQL Server. Once the event data is captured, CIP and other reports can be generated.