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Reducing water and energy consumption for CIP

27 April 2023

Find out how both water and energy consumption can be reduced for cleaning-in-place (CIP) of membrane filtration plants.

Membrane filtration plants are an important fixture in many food processing plants, to separate or concentrate substances without thermal stress. Cleaning this equipment has traditionally been energy- and water-intensive, requiring three or four individual cleaning steps with different chemical cleaning agents to be pumped and circulated through the equipment for a specified amount of time before it is rinsed out with water. 

GEA Smart Filtration Flush adds sensors to the process to constantly measure the permeate quality of the water during the flushing process can reduce the freshwater required by automatically intervening in the CIP process, pulsing the pumps and flushing the membranes individually and according to real-time water quality. 

This means that setting blanket rinsing intervals and water quantities in advance is no longer necessary as the software stops the process as soon as the necessary hygiene level is reached, and the cleaning agents are discharged. Depending on the type and size of the plant and the water properties, we are told that operators can reduce their freshwater requirements by up to 50%.

“A typical dairy whey protein concentration process will need between two and four filtration plants connected in a series. This set up can require more than 100,000 litres of water, per cleaning cycle,” explained Nils Mørk, R&D Engineer for membrane filtration at GEA. “We know from plant tests that we can save up to 50,000 litres of water for each clean in large plants and 500 to 700 litres per CIP in small productions.”

When less water is fed into the process the amount of wastewater which needs to be discharged also decreases. “Many manufacturers can only clean their filtration systems successively because the peak flows during flushing of filtration plants often exceed pipeline capacity. That can create a potential safety hazard and can cause contamination in the production area. Smart Filtration Flush eliminates this peak water flow problem because it can reduce pressure fluctuations in the water supply and reduce the overflow of drain lines,” explained Nils.

Regulating cleaning efficiency
Another software module from GEA is able to regulate cleaning efficiency. It causes the pumps to operate in a pulsating manner as opposed to running continuously. As a result, the pumps consume up to 50% less energy during the CIP process. Traditionally, the best results have been achieved by cleaning with high shear forces – an approach which meant the maximum allowed pressure drop across the membranes was applied during the CIP process –entailing much higher energy consumption. The GEA solution breaks with this method, without losing efficacy. 

According to tests conducted by GEA on various membrane plants, the same level of hygienic cleaning is achieved even if the pump only operates at short intervals – providing the time, temperature and chemical concentration is kept constant. “Our method, now applied to membrane plants, mirrors the basic principles used successfully by washing machines – agitate the clothes followed by intervals of rest, allowing the cleaning agent do its job,” explained Nils. 

Compared to plants with standard pump operation at full load, small production plants using this system would save between 5 and 7 kilowatt hours per clean. Large filtration plants would require 60 to 100 kilowatt hours less electrical energy per CIP process. 


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