Cleaning in place (CIP) project for one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies

Challenge

One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies asked us “Can you clean mayonnaise in pipes?”

Removing difficult to clean substances from inside pipes – including burnt-on or fouled product – whilst ensuring no taints or residues, and delivering microbiological and allergenic safety is a challenge across the food industry. The current solution is to use extremely caustic chemicals to remove the soils, followed by significant rinsing to ensure that the processing lines are free of chemicals.

Our industries

The solution

To demonstrate the efficacy of eloclear for CIP, we constructed a trial rig which was constructed to reflect as many poor design features as possible. These included significant pipe bends, dead legs, pipe joints, ability to foul and burn on product, etc. The aim was to make cleaning the test rig as challenging as possible.

Results

A range of product types was tested, including high fat, high sugar and high viscosity fluids. Following cleaning the rig was broken down and assessed using ATP (internal assessment), microbiological and allergen swabs (externally tested at UKAS accredited lab). Good results were achieved across all test materials.

 

Next steps

Identify a suitable industrial partner in order to carry out industrial trials to demonstrate water, time and energy savings.