What’s So Special About Specialty Sanitation Chemistries?

The “costs” of sanitation must be reduced under increasing processing run demand with new or modified soils created by these new processing systems. These tougher, problematic soils need to be efficiently removed in a variety of complicated equipment processing modes. For example, a fruit or vegetable flume that is cleaned nightly will have significantly less biofilm and scale buildup than one who is on a seasonal intense extended production run that won’t be properly cleaned for four or five days. The same can be said for the same produce-processing mode in the blancher where these typical seasonal extended runs result in a level of organic load and scale that can imperil both food safety as well as quality. Another example is that of a fry operation. In some production scenarios, the fryers are not cleaned for over two weeks. Obviously, the same product being fried is going to have significantly less carbonized soil if the fryer is cleaned nightly versus weekly versus every two weeks.

Challenges

While the chemistries used for a fryer, a freezer/cooling tunnel, or a flume have in each instance the same soils, temperatures, and processes, the processing time between cleanups create a multitude of soil scale factors that will demand novel or specialty cleaning chemistries to be employed.

Ovens, fryers, and smokehouses/cookers and brewery equipment all pose significant cleaning challenges for the sanitation program especially during extended runs. The high temperatures of cooking and kill process coupled with the high carbohydrate, high protein, or combination soils being carbonized create the sanitation challenges. While conventional chemistries could deal with these after a short production run, these same chemistries provide incomplete cleaning for extended runs.

The demands for new creative chemistries or procedures to deal with these heavily carbonized protein-lipid-carbohydrate complexes have compelled the industry to become creative to effectively remove these problematic soils without wreaking havoc on a plant’s wastewater treatment system. An approach to reduce levels of caustic cleaners and cleaning these carbonized soils more effectively involve the utilization of a low concentration of an acidic peroxide additive (e.g. Rochester Midland Corp.’s Enhance O2) that creates a unique oxidative, the perhydroxyl anion. The formation of the perhydroxyl anion markedly reduces concentrations of the caustic cleaner by up to 50 percent and reduces the time by roughly 50 percent. This regimen is done in concert with cleaning coils, vents, and other ancillary areas with a gel caustic product to loosen the most problematic carbonized soils. Non to low hydrogenated oils (e.g. canola or sunflower oils) are becoming the standard for fried foods. Non-hydrogenated oils (NHOs) have created cleaning challenges so specialty gel caustic cleaners (e.g. Rochester Midland’s Powergel NHO) have had to be developed to deal with the unique soils these NHOs create. Also, in brew house applications involving mash, lauter tuns, and wort kettles, the carbonized soils are very difficult to clean.

Image Credit: Harpoon Brewery Co., Al Marzi, President of Brewery Operations. Wort kettle after Ehance O2

Some case study examples utilizing the acidic peroxide additive include the following.

• A deep fat tortilla-corn chip fryer had issues with polymerized cottonseed oil creating a laborious six-hour SSOP. By utilizing the acidic peroxide additive with a powdered caustic, the total cleaning process was reduced down to two hours (one hour boilout and one hour clean). This reduction in cleaning resulted in a $500 per month savings on this fryer alone.
  Potato fry plant had high levels of transition metals in its water supply, which resulted in huge scale buildups in the fryers’ energy recovery systems (ERS). For years the BTU efficiencies of the ERS had plummeted to very wasteful levels. Recirculation of the acidic peroxide enabled the complete removal of the scale buildups and returned the ERS to its original optimal BTU efficiencies.
• A major pasta processor had serious issues in removing scale from cookers and blanchers used in the process. Besides using a copious amount of caustic cleaner, an acidic CIP cleaner step was required weekly to remove the scale. Utilizing the acidic peroxide additive resulted in a 50 percent reduction in caustic usage, and elimination of the weekly acidic wash step. This resulted in an $11,000 reduction of labor costs annually coupled with a $1,000 reduction in water usage for $12,000 savings annually. This same plant was provided with cleaning equipment, which further resulted in $7,000 in joint process improvements.
• A snack food plant with fryers had high annual sanitation chemical costs of $125,000 annually with its previous supplier. Utilization of the acidic peroxide additive in the fryer boilouts coupled with increased chemical delivery efficiencies resulted in total sanitation, labor, and utilities costs of $50,000 annually, a $75,000 annualized savings.

Cooling or freezing tunnels and spirals also have unique challenges. These equipment units, used either in post kill or par-fry operations, can become major reservoirs of post-lethality cross-contamination due to the older units’ poor hygienic designs. Even the newer cooling or freezer tunnels or spirals can be major cross-contamination vectors if proper adherence to the SSOP is not maintained, especially in the cooling unit’s fans, fins, and coils. The hygienic challenge with these unit fans, fins, and coils is partially due to the huge surface areas inherent in the unit design coupled with the soft metals, particularly aluminum, that inhibits usage of robust chlorinated caustic cleaning systems. This is also the same issue in the environmental sanitation of HVAC units in holding coolers throughout plants.