Simplifying Hygiene and Sanitation Practices

“Our Knowledge-Based Services offer a holistic approach to help food and beverage manufacturers measure, monitor, and improve operational efficiency and food safety throughout their operations,” Wagler relates. “These services are designed to streamline processes, increase efficiency, and reduce food safety risks, all while closely managing costs and pursuing the efficient use of resources.”

CIPCheck. Diversey CIPCheck focuses on the technical, environmental, and economic optimization of CIP installations to help a plant discover if its CIP system is underperforming, says Eric van der Beek, a Diversey Hygiene sector specialist.

“While CIP systems are designed to automate a plant’s cleaning process and efficiently clean and sanitize enclosed processing equipment, we have found that more than 50 percent of CIP systems run unvalidated, using the original settings,” van der Beek points out. “With today’s emphasis on improved resource management, it’s important for food and beverage processors to consider a detailed analysis of their CIP system to determine whether incremental improvements like balancing out line capacity or adding a recovery tank to re-use water will improve efficiency or resource use.”

When a system hasn’t been fine-tuned to perform optimally for a specific plant, including needed modifications to accommodate any production process changes that occurred since installation, the plant may not be getting the full operational benefit from its CIP system investment, van der Beek points out.

For the CIPCheck process, the Diversey service team conducts a detailed probe into the CIP system to assess the system design; audit current cleaning procedures; map the current water, energy, and chemical usage; and measure cycle time.

“As necessary, we conduct additional assessments into the cleaning result, microbiological standards, and specific soils or allergens,” van der Beek relates. “Clients get an analysis benchmarking their plant’s performance against industry standards and a detailed report identifying areas of improvement.

“CIPCheck results help food and beverage manufacturers prioritize areas of improvement and take action, so a repeatable clean can be delivered sustainably with each cycle,” van der Beek adds. “The CIPCheck program helps processors improve cleaning results, maintain microbiological standards, and safeguard food safety.”

CIPTEC. Diversey CIPTEC harnesses the power of light to monitor a CIP system in real time. A series of patented CIPTEC spectrophotometers are placed through the CIP system to measure light traveling through the liquids inside a CIP system, van der Beek explains.

“Traditional CIP metrics measure the flow, conductivity, and temperature, which can indicate that the cleaning cycle has met predefined parameters, but this data cannot indicate the level of clean,” he points out. “Typically, CIP cycle times are based on empirical averages, generally resulting in cleaning cycles that are too long. In some cases, however, even these long cycles can fall short, impacting the safety of a product or the efficiency of an operation. We have found that the majority of CIP systems are over-washing by as much as to 50 percent.

“The light spectrum more accurately measures the contents of the CIP system, and CIPTEC data can tell the difference between water, chemicals, or milk residues, which conductivity can—but not to the level that CIPTEC can,” van der Beek elaborates. “CIPTEC systems and our statistical data analysis methods calculate the optimal regime to eliminate over-rinsing and over-washing. In many cases, we’re able to reduce cycle times by more than 50 percent, while maintaining a safety margin at Six Sigma level.”

According to van der Beek, benefits of CIPTEC include reducing the water, energy, and chemical used unnecessarily; improving the recovery of product by measuring more accurately the soil and chemical level; shortening the overall CIP time; reducing waste water generation, carbon dioxide emissions, and chemical oxygen demand loading; ensuring the correct level of hygiene is achieved during the CIP process without over-washing; improving quality control monitoring of the CIP system, in real time; and providing the plant with additional time for valuable processing and packaging.