How saving on your CIP processes can improve your overall efficiency

Clean in Place, also known as a CIP process, is a very efficient way of cleaning; eliminating the risk of wastage, inefficiency and downtime. In this article, PIF spoke to Baumer UK to find out how reducing costs and increasing efficiency on your Clean in Place processes can help to improve the overall efficiency of your manufacturing activities.

Baumer UK recommends a range of solutions to improve CIP processes across your manufacturing facility, including the CombiLyz sensor solution. Read on to learn more about increasing your overall efficiency with cleaning in process systems.

What is Clean in Place?

Clean in place (CIP) is a method of cleaning equipment with minimal dismantling and operator or manual involvement. This system is commonly used in hygiene critical industries such as the food & beverage and pharmaceutical industries to clean a wide variety of plant equipment.

By maintaining an effective cleaning process, this ensures that equipment is suitable for use. This in turn reduces downtime and ensures batch quality. Within the pharmaceutical industry, CIP refers to the use of a mix of chemicals, heat and water to clean machinery, vessels or pipework without dismantling the entire plant that would result in costly downtime.

Clean in Place principles can be applied to any industry in which hygiene is critical, typically being automated within a plant. It is often used for picking and packing applications within food production to remove soil and other foreign bodies that may be hiding dangerous bacteria on fruit and vegetables. With a Clean in Place process that combines the CombiLyz conductivity sensor with increased efficiency; Baumer UK claims that you can save up to 1 million litres of water and media every single year.

Clean in Place processes within the Pharmaceutical industry?

Optimising processes across your production facility depends on efficient, effective cleaning within your CIP processes. Clean in place systems can be incorporated into all of our Baumer solutions for the pharmaceutical industry for both solid and liquid handling, and production.

Within the manufacturing industry of numerous pharmaceuticals; automating the cleaning cycle essentially converts batch pharmaceutical processes into a continuous operation of production and cleaning cycles. The advantages of Clean in Process includes:

• Reduced cleaning cycle times,
• Optimised use of detergent and water,
• Eliminates manual cleaning.

How does a Clean in Place process work?

Ideally, CIP processes should not rely on chemicals but instead rely on water solubility by using kinetic energy, temperature and time to achieve the necessary results. Unfortunately, many CIP systems do need chemicals or detergents to be effective.

It is important that a CIP process can be measured and validated. This means that the procedure can be repeated to create a CIP cycle with batch and traceability records can be kept. This ensures traceability, requirements, as well as other legislative demands being met.

What are the challenges to CIP Processes?

Baumer UK recommends to clients that CIP is vital within pharmaceutical environments. One of the main reasons for this is that the final rinses from the CIP system often involves the final water contacting the equipment before production and hence, may need to be of product contact quality.

A Clean in Place system must take into account not only the cleaning required but also the environmental impact of the whole CIP process to improve your overall efficiency. Energy consumption must be minimised in conjunction with a reduction in the amount of water and chemicals used. Whilst older, or ineffectively designed CIPs tend to overuse water, energy and chemical usage; a more modern, well-designed system minimises all of these risks and therefore increase efficiency across your processes. As a result of this, CIP systems should be manufactured to provide decades of trouble-free operation, with energy and cost efficiency built-in.

Save water, cleaning agents, and costs with the CombiLyz conductivity sensor from Baumer;

The CombiLyz conductivity sensor from Baumer is an indispensable assistant for the phase separation of food materials, water and cleaning materials. This happens by the CombiLyz conductivity sensor measuring the electric conductivity of the flowing media very precisely and uses this as a basis to understand the type of media and its concentration level at speeds that are significantly faster than comparable sensors. As a result, the controls can react significantly faster and separate the individual phases by actuating valves.

Stefan Blust; the food and beverage sector manager at Baumer states that “calculations have shown that food-processing plants using the CombiLyz conductivity sensor during the clean-in-place process have a substantial cost reduction for water and cleaning agents”. Stefan Blurst added that this “considerably increases the overall equipment effectiveness, also known as OEE”.

An example of this can be seen with Granarolo, Italy’s largest dairy processing operation. They produce millions of litres of milk a year from their Bologna plant. At its plant; tanks, pipelines, and thermal treatment systems are cleaned up to 30 times a day.

Bruno Landuzzi, the maintenance manager at Granarolo told PIF, “thanks to the quick temperature compensation of the CombiLyz, we can save more than 100,000 litres of water per year at every measuring point”. Find out how much you can save with the Baumer CIP savings calculators.

What are the benefits of using the CombiLyz sensor?

• Reduce waste of chemicals - Enable precise phase separation due to fast temperature compensation
• Long life cycle - With a robust sensor tip, IP67 or IP 69K housing, 16 bar pressure-proof and resistance to high temperatures up to 143°C the CombiLyz has an extended life cycle
• Easy to setup - The touch screen, PC-based user interface or IO-Link Mater parameterisation makes the CombiLyz easy to set up
• Added value thanks to digital sensor data - Digital data transmission without loss, the simultaneous output of conductivity and concentration valves, increasing measuring speed by combination of sensor data
• Easy to read - Easy to read data with a big display, that is 360° rotatable and free-text programmable.

The efficiency benefits of moving to a CombiLyz conductivity sensor within your Clean in Place processes are clear, and Baumer can assist you in implementing this process within your manufacturing process. Use the Baumer savings calculator to work out how much you can save with a CombiLyz conductivity sensor.