Many food and pharmaceutical
processing plants work with dry powder products, which are conveyed throughout
the facility in piping systems from vessel to vessel and into the finished
product package. These product
conveyance (PC) lines need to be disinfected in a careful manner which ensures
that they are completely dry before product is reintroduced. If a liquid disinfectant is introduced, it
can bind with residual product to form crusts and hard biofilms. ClorDiSys
uses dry, chlorine dioxide gas to decontaminate piping systems and has
performed many successful treatments within both the food and pharmaceutical
industries.
Chlorine dioxide gas works extremely
well for this application because, as a gas, it is able to move freely through
the piping system and all the bends and turns throughout. Gasses do not condense or stick to surfaces
like liquids and liquid based vapor methods would, they simply continue to
travel down the line and fill up the entire system. To speed this process up, a recirculation
loop is traditionally set up to connect the inlet and outlet of the system and
provide an airflow within the closed loop.
Chlorine dioxide gas is able to be accurately measured throughout the
entire process, typically being measured at the very end of the loop upstream
of the gas injection location. This
allows for excellent process control, as the decontamination process continues
until the proper dosage has been met, rather than end after a preset time. This allows the decontamination process to be
validated to a particular dosage, which can be reliably and repeatably met
every time. As a process which can be
validated, chlorine dioxide gas can be used as a clean break within the PC
lines, allowing for a true microbial reset of the environment.
Another main benefit for the use of ClorDiSys dry generated chlorine dioxide gas comes at the end of the treatment. CD gas is safe to vent to the atmosphere, allowing tanks and piping systems to be vented to exhaust at the end of the cycle. Our proprietary pure chlorine dioxide gas does not leave a residue, making it ideal for product contact surfaces such as PC lines. For such a critical part of the production process, it is essential to use an effective sanitation method. With treatment times ranging from 4-8 hours depending on the complexity, decontaminations can be implemented as part of scheduled downtimes and occur at varying frequencies to provide greater assurance that the product being conveyed is safe.
To learn more about PC Line Decontamination, join our webinar on August 19th.
