Utility Air, Gas, Steam & Water Filtration

Food and beverage manufacturers face many complex challenges on a daily basis. Often, solutions for these can be traced back to basics. Utilities management in food plants underpins success.

Utility fluids such as water, air, steam and other gases support all manufacturing processes and represent the basic building blocks which are used to create products or enable plant operations. Their quality and handling influences downstream applications and impacts overall smooth and economic plant performance. 

Securing the quality of utilities based on their end use requirements is a good manufacturing approach which proactively eliminates problems, safeguards the process, and allows food and beverage manufacturers to focus on the larger challenges they face. Pall Corporation can help our customers with these basics.

Pall’s long and proven experience in satisfying general and critical air and gas applications in many industries translates to food and beverage product and process protection. We offer liquid/gas coalescers, activated carbon filters, particle filters and validated microbial and bacteriophage removal filters. 

Liquid/gas coalescers deliver clean aerosol-free gas ensuring corrosion protection and reliable cost-effective downstream equipment operation. Particle filters eliminate unwanted airborne particles and visible contaminants to protect the final filters to ensure long service life. Lastly, the microbial final cartridge filters remove microorganisms in critical environments under both humid and dry conditions. A typical 3 stage installation is shown below.

• Tank vent protection
• Protection of drying or hot air    
• Oil and moisture removal from compressed air/gas            
• Aseptic bulk storage tank and sterile filling
• Seed, propagation, and production fermenter protection
• Fermenter exhaust air filtration                                                
• Moisture removal from sampling air for analytic equipment protection
• Fermenter sparging air filtration  
• Microbial removal from pneumatic air for product protection from contamination of food products                                                                                                                              
• Protection of starter culture tanks from microbial and bacteriophage contamination    

Clear, colorless, odorless, and tasteless, water is the common thread that runs through the production of any food and beverage. Whether you’re producing alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, packaged food or ingredients, water is one of the most critical raw materials. As an ingredient, fluctuations in water quality and content affect taste, appearance, and even safety. Additionally, as a utility fluid for rinsing, cleaning and product pushing, water quality can also affect the efficient operation of any packaging, bottling or production facility.

With hundreds of Pall Aria™ hollow fiber membrane systems installed in food and beverage plants globally, and thousands of water clarification, polishing and sterilizing applications in use, Pall’s experience in handling plant water is at your disposal. We tailor our solutions to our customers’ unique technical and economic requirements. 

• Plant incoming water treatment   
• Process water recycling                     
• Process water treatment and monitoring   

Figure 2 below shows an example of process water filtration used within a food and beverage production facility.  An initial coarse clarification step may be employed for general use water for applications including CIP and wash water, cooling water and equipment seal water.  A second pre-filtration step, typically down to 1 µm might be employed to remove particles, Cryptosporidium oocyst and Giardia from water for applications like equipment sanitization water, water for cleaning of crossflow systems or wash water for fruits and vegetables. Additionally, a membrane filter could also be employed to produce microbiologically stable water used for product dilution or bottle rinsing.  See example below.

Rust and debris in steam lines should be removed by installing steam filters to achieve particle removal. By combining 60+ years of experience in sintered stainless steel with new state-of-the-art manufacturing technology, Pall PSS® Plus steam filters for the food and beverage industry offer unmatched service life and cost-effective operation for many applications. 

• Fruit and vegetable blanching                                                                                                        
• Steam stripping for oils and flavor fractionation                                
• Steam peeling                                                                                   
• Reformed meat product processing                                               
• Odor removal from compressed gas streams                      
• Poultry and swine carcass treatment                                            
• Aseptic equipment sterilization and steam tracing                     
• Proofing ovens                                                                            
• Can headspace flushing
• Pre-conditioning and extrusion         
• Direct steam injection for aseptic products                                                                                                                  
• Steam tunnels for labeling equipment                                             
• Thermal processing of beverages and canned products 
• Indirect heat exchange                                                                                                                 
• Steam cleaning of equipment surfaces