Improving your performance in Soft Drink mixing and filling processes

Your production processes are as individual as your products. KROHNE offers you measuring technology that is precisely adapted to your needs and your production processes. This is how we optimise your production:

Soft Drinks are enormously popular beverages consisting primarily of carbonated water, sugar, and flavourings. The main raw material is water, which is needed in large amounts. This must be treated to remove impurities, filtered, chlorinated, and then adjusted to the proper pH Level to get the same, consistent flavour all over the world. The purified water will then be processed in the plant, where it is first degassed under CO² in a partial vacuum to remove the oxygen.

Afterwards the water can be mixed with some sweetening syrups or sugars and flavours – colourings can be added to suit the end product. These additions can be done in several stages, mainly in vessels blanketed with CO². During this full process it is required to cool or heat the ingredients: heating for pasteurisation of some components, cooling for controlled and better dosing with CO² gas. The water is typically carbonated with CO² in the final process stage, just before filling into bottles or cans.

Our portfolio for the Food & Beverage industry contains products for flow, level, pressure and temperature measurement as well as inline analysis in hygienic and auxiliary applications. The hygienic instruments feature conformity to EC 1935/2004 and FDA, and are EHEDG and 3A approved. We offer flowmeters for low conductivity liquids and for liquids with gas entrainment, plus mass and volume flowmeters for precise control of filling machines. We also offer non-contact level transmitters for liquids and solids – for operation even in dusty atmospheres, without any need for air purge. A wide range of hygienic connections are available for all instruments.

The volumetric flow of the degassed liquid can be measured with our high-end electromagnetic flowmeter OPTIFLUX 6000. It offers a high accuracy of ±0.2% of measured value, even for low conductivity liquids (≥ 1 μS/cm).
The temperature during this process can be measured with our new temperature measurement sensors OPTITEMP TRA-H6X and OPTITEMP TRA-C6X. These offer you a wide variety of hygienic process connections combined with a 6mm thermowell with a reduced tip of either 3 or 4mm, giving the fast reaction times needed for proper process control.
Process pressure is measured using the OPTIBAR PM 3050, which offers the highest accuracy and temperature stability, combined with a fully welded stainless steel hygienic design.

The OPTIMASS Coriolis mass flowmeters are ideal for measuring each of the beverage ingredients to be added. Thanks to the EGM™ (Entrained Gas Management) technology the KROHNE Coriolis devices are able to do this with entrained gas proportions in the flowing mixtures of up to 100%. Additionally the OPTIMASS can measure the concentration from sugar over its precise density measurement. Level devices can be used for high and low level alarms for the mixing tanks of solid or liquid ingredients. Similar devices would be used on the main storage tanks. The mixing vessel temperature can be monitored using OPTITEMP sensors, with its stainless steel thermowell. All devices are EHEDG and 3-A certified and meet the requirements of FDA, EC1935 / 2004 and EEC MI 005 directive.

The BATCHFLUX 5500 is the most accurate volumetric electromagnetic flowmeter on the market. It has been proven in use during many years and has established its status as one of the standard devices throughout the industry, used for all kind of volumetric filling units.
It offers a unique ceramic liner, giving the highest repeatability and long-term stability. Ceramic liners are the most robust, and can withstand difficult applications, e.g. hot filling and CIP/SIP cleaning cycles.
The BATCHFLUX 5500 electromagnetic flowmeters are specially configured for repeated filling operations of exact liquid quantities into cartons etc, to make a batch filling system that takes account of legislative requirements and minimised overfill.

All the process vessels and pipework within the beverage industry require periodic cleaning to ensure a hygienic envirornment. To minimise downtime and increase employee safety, this is done inline using a Clean-In-Place system.
This CIP process is usually fully automated and thus requires suitable process instrumentation to supervise the cleaning. The following decribes a typical CIP process, but it may vary depending on the actual beverage produced. The pipes are pre-rinsed with water, which removes part of any residue. Then the piping is flushed with caustic solution, which can be repeated to improve effectiveness.
The piping is now flushed again with purified water, before the next step where the piping is cleaned with an acid solution. In the final stage everything is flushed again with purified water to remove the last impurities and any remaining acid solution.