Identification of physical-chemical properties of soils for structure-based cleaning optimisation in the food industry 2 - StReo 2

A growing variety of products and decreasing batch sizes confront the food industry with new challenges regarding the design of cleaning processes due to frequent product changes. The interactions between the complexly composed soils and the cleaning fluid are usually not fully understood, which is why the cleaning process cannot be adapted to the cleaning requirements of the respective products. In many cases, overdimensioning is therefore carried out with high consumption of water, chemicals and energy, which leads to a discrepancy between environmental and consumer protection.

The aim of the research project is to identify the influences of chemical-physical properties of individual soil components on the cleaning behaviour of complex soils.

The previous project "Soil Structure Based Cleaning Optimization" (IGF 19640 BR) has already contributed to this. Starches of different botanical origin and modification were analysed chemically and physically with regard to swelling, dissolving, wetting, binding and rheological behaviour. By means of multivariate statistics it was examined which of these properties are relevant for the cleaning behaviour using three industrially relevant wet cleaning processes (jet cleaning, falling film cleaning, pipe cleaning).

In the following project, the applied methods will be transferred to complexly composed soils consisting of different carbohydrates and a whey protein. The cleaning behaviour of the selected soils will be measured in a plane channel flow with varying cleaning fluid. The influence of the time-varying soil properties in the cleaning process is analysed by means of time-resolved effect analysis to determine the cleaning success in the different cleaning phases. For the first time these temporal changes of the cleaning-relevant chemical-physical properties are identified and quantified by means of multivariate statistics in connection with the cleaning behaviour of the selected soils. The estimation of the cleaning behaviour, based on the individual composition of the soils, allows a reduction of resource consumption as well as cleaning costs and time. For this purpose, a decision tree is made available to the industrial user group, which allows a soil-specific adaptation of cleaning processes and transfers the complex cause-and-effect relationships into an application-oriented and expandable format.

In cooperation with:

Chair of Processing Machines and Processing Technology; TU Dresden

Project duration: 04.2020 – 07.2022

Supported by:

This research project is supported by the Industrievereinigung für Lebensmitteltechnologie und Verpackung e. V. (IVLV), the Arbeitsgemeinschaft industrieller Forschungsvereinigungen “Otto von Guericke” e. V. (AiF) and the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (IGF 20861 BR).