Top Editors ... Filling for the future

Title: Filling for the future
Date: 07/09/2007
Autor: By Claire Rowan

Filling technology is becoming faster, more accurate and more efficient
every year as suppliers innovate to meet the demands of the market

Beverage manufacturers are continuing to innovate to meet the demands of modern drink consumers. Smoothies, tropical flavoured fruit drinks and near waters, health drinks and energy drinks all jostle for position with traditional favourites throughout Europe, and technology has to keep pace and offer continuously greater flexibility, high throughputs, and ease of cleaning and changeover.
The trend towards healthy and natural beverages in plastic bottles in particular is putting pressure on manufacturers to optimise cold filling techniques that preserve the quality of the end product without the need for preservatives and avoiding the damage possibly caused to sensitive components by hot filling.
KHS’s new filling system, which picked up the Gold award at the Intervitis Interfructa exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany in April, was specifically developed for aseptic cold filling of non-alcoholic beverages in plastic bottles at a rate of up to 60,000 bottles per hour. Said to be the first system of its kind, KHS’s Innofill DNRV draws on a dry sterilisation process and involves the automation of the traditionally manual operations found in conventional filling plants, such as the rapid changeover from normal pressure to counterpresure filling; the changeover of bottle mouth sizes; and cleaning in place regimes. Full automation of these functions has been designed to reduce any intervention in the isolator area, and therefore downtime.
Normal pressure filling in the Innofill DNRV is based on KHS’s Innofill NV filler technology. It uses an open-jet, free flow principle where no part of the filling valve touches the bottle mouth during filling, guaranteeing the highest level of hygiene.
Counter-pressure filling, however, is based on KHS’s new Innofill DRV triple chamber technology for aseptic operation. In the same way as for normal pressure filling, the DNRV counter-pressure filling system passes the plastic bottle into a neck ring holder under the filling valve. The bottle is now pneumatically lifted and pressed until it is ‘gas-tight’ against the filling valve. The element of the valve used for open-jet filling remains permanently closed during the counter-pressure filling process, and after the pressurisation of the bottle with sterile gas a special valve element within the filler then opens and passes product over a ‘swirler’ at a high rate of flow. The product flows down the walls of the bottle as a film of liquid, while return gas escapes through a centrally located gas pipe and two opened gas cylinders. Once the fill level reaches the area of the bottle neck one of the two gas cylinders closes automatically thereby reducing the flow of return gas and thus the filling speed.
Once filling is complete, the return gas path of the operating gas cylinder remains open. This creates a slight overpressure in the bottle neck, which prevents excessive foam formation and makes it possible to use the Innofill DNRV to fill even those beverages with a high level of carbon dioxide at room temperature.
A further innovation of the DNRV is the special switching mechanism installed centrally under the filling valve, which can be operated automatically to pivot into different positions for handling different sized bottle mouths and for cleaning in place (CIP).

Dairy filling
Stork Food & Dairy Systems has also been innovating with its filling technology and has recently introduced a new generation of Ultraclean Dairyfill fillers, which it developed in conjunction with Robert Wiseman Dairies in the UK. The order for the three latest fillers bring the total number of Stork fillers at
Wiseman’s to 22.
Improvements in the area of HEPA air control, improved drainage and dry floor operation were key to the development of these new rotary weight fillers, the largest of which will be used for the high speed filling of milk into various sized HDPE handle jugs.
For this application, the filler had to overcome the challenge of supporting the jugs during the filling process to prevent deformation and overfilling.
It was ordered at the same time as two smaller Stork rotary weigh fillers, which will be used for filling full fat, semi skimmed and skimmed milk at high speed. All machines have integrated cappers, and are currently in construction ready for delivery during 2007.
Hero in The Netherlands, which has been enjoying increasing success for its Fruit2Day fruit-based drink (FBI. Dec 06) has recently ordered its third aseptic filler in three years from Stork. This new unit will have an increased capacity and can handle 24,000 x 200ml bottles per hour of the Fruit2Day product, a fruit juice containing pieces of fruit.
The existing machines at the plant have capacities of 12,000 and 18,000 bottles per hour respectively, and the smallest is now to be used for both Fruit2Day and a new launch by Hero, ActiFruit, a fruit juice with high fibre. Although the bottles used for the two products are different in size and shape, the Stork Asep-Tec has the built-in flexibility to handle them both without any changes to the internal Asep-Tec transport system or the output conveyor, according to Stork.
Aseptic filling specialist Serac has recently introduced its new generation SAS 3 aseptic filling machine that offers multiproduct, multi-format, and multi-material capability, for dry or liquid sterilisation processes. The objective of the enhanced filling system is to provide versatility with product tracking, as well as improved safety thanks to its new RABS isolator technology.
The SAS 3 fills at a speed of up to 50,000 bottles per hour and uses a weight filling system with Multiflow type nozzles to ensure the efficient handling of liquid or semi-liquid (with pulp or lumps) products; and pH neutral or acidic products. With the SAS 3 it is not necessary to sterilise the filling zone between products as a result of Serac’s novel container neck transfer system; and different material bottles, PET or PEHD for example, can be handled on the same line.
Serac has has also recently joined forces with Nova, known for its expertise in the volumetric filling of foodstuffs to perfect a new, high performance, reliable and highly adaptable, volumetric aseptic filling system for neutral pH dairy products, on which products are filled aseptically and stored at ambient temperature.
The resulting patented filling plant features two, four or more heads and includes magnetically-controlled filling technology. The absence of dynamic seals makes the machine simpler, safer and more reliable, according to Nova, and as it is fully automatic and controlled with ‘brushless’ motors it is possible to fill several different products on the same machine. The system is designed to be incorporated into an aseptic environment or ultra clean lines, and can handle many dairy products including pudding desserts.