Purge ends in 5 minutes!

• German company shows how to reduce water use through optimised cleaning-in-place technique 
• Shorter purge cycle reduces water consumption by 12 %, saving about € 10 600 per annum

Beverage production is a very water-intensive industry, both as an ingredient and in cleaning. Improvements and innovations along the production line could save enormous quantities of water, help to bring production costs down, and mitigate the environmental impact of the sector.

Equipment cleaning is a particularly demanding process on water, but advances in technology can help companies better monitor consumption at every stage of production, including the cleaning. A German beverage manufacturer, for example, uses data management tools to monitor its cleaning-in-place (CIP) process. With the software and dedicated sensor system, tank and pipe cleaning can be analysed and optimised accordingly.

Key benefits

By closely monitoring the water consumption and cleaning, the company realised that the post-purge period in the tanks could be reduced from 10 to 5 minutes with the same cleaning result. With this measure, the annual water consumption could be reduced by 2 880 m3 or around 12 %. This leads to cost savings of about € 10 600 per annum. The payback period of this measure is just over one year.