GEA halves water and power consumption for CIP in membrane filtration in the food industry

Water-saving CIP optimization, downsized CIP infrastructure

“A typical dairy whey protein concentration process needs two to four filtration plants connected in a series. This set up can require more than 100,000 liters of water, per cleaning cycle,” explains Nils Mørk, R&D Engineer for membrane filtration at GEA. “Today, we know from plant tests that we can save well up to 50,000 liters of water per cleaning in such large plants and 500 to 700 liters per CIP in small productions.”

Additionally, when less water is fed into the process, this decreases the amount of wastewater which needs to be discharged. “Many manufacturers can only clean their filtration systems successively because the peak flows during flushing of filtration plants often exceed pipeline capacity. That can create a potential safety hazard for staff and cause contamination in the production area. We eliminate this peak water flow problem with Smart Flush because we can significantlyreduce pressure fluctuations in the water supply and reduce the overflow of drain lines.”

Up to 50 percent less energy thanks to pulsating pumps

The second software module, GEA Smart Filtration CIP, is a software module that regulates cleaning efficiency. It causes the pumps to operate in a pulsating manner as opposed to running continuously. As a result, the pumps consume up to 50 percent less energy during the CIP process. Traditionally, the best results were achieved by cleaning with high shear forces (e.g., mechanical washing with a strong rinse flow).This approach meant the maximumallowed pressure drop across the membranes was appliedduring the CIP process – which entails much higher energy consumption. GEA Smart Filtration CIP breaks with this inefficient method, without losing efficacy.