Facilities that bottle and can foodstuffs

A major US beer manufacturer operates one of its largest packaging facilities on the east coast of America. The plant operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and routinely produces 18 million litres of beer per year with a wholesale value of over US$150 million. A Halox distributor provides water treatment at this site.

Bottles and cans are rapidly transported throughout the processing plant on conveyor belts. To prevent foreign materials from falling into containers, they are kept upside down before being filled. Being upside down, the conveyor belts cannot be greased in the traditional way for fear of grease getting into the containers. Instead, the belts are lubricated with water, sprayed from dozens of jets located along the line.

Where there is water there is the opportunity for bacteria to grow. The conveyor lines, therefore, are prone to bacterial contamination. Due to the wet conditions and the availability of a nutrient source (beer), microbiological organisms thrive and create a slimy 'biofilm' everywhere. Every three to four days each line would be shut down and cleaned for several hours. This downtime represented a serious loss of productive plant capacity and increased operating costs.

Chlorine dioxide is not only a safe biocide, it is also very effective in preventing the formation of biofilm. Halox recommended a very low dose of CIO2 in the lubricating water to overcome the biofilm fouling problem.

A Halox H1000 with four cassettes, capable of producing 0.5 kg per day of CIO2 was installed next to one of the canning lines. The system doses into a holding tank that use level switches to turn the Halox unit on and off. Chemical dosing pumps are used to add the CIO2 to the lubrication water.

A CIO2 residual was found in the spray water almost immediately after the system was put into operation. Some of the benefits of using CIO2 included: line shutdown for biofilm cleaning went from every three to four days to several months; significant recovery of production capacity; and there was a major reduction in operating costs.

The canning line generally fills 1600 cans per minute. The success of CIO2 from the Halox H1000 has resulted in increased production of about 288,000 cans of beer every three days. This represents an additional increase in excess of US$5 million in wholesale revenue per year.

Chlorine dioxide has been widely tested and used for food applications and approved by the appropriate regulatory agencies in the US and elsewhere. CIO2 has no adverse effects on food, no adverse taste or odour, and is shown to be very effective at low concentrations. It is approved and recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency as an environmentally-friendly drinking water additive to replace chlorine (which forms carcinogenic by-products).

However, US federal law prohibits the transportation of CIO2. It must be produced where it is used. Most traditional generation techniques are unacceptable to small and intermediate size users. These methods produce excessive quantities of CIO2 (solutions containing 10 to 50 thousand ppm CIO2). They also involve the use of multiple hazardous reactant chemicals and are difficult and dangerous to operate. The Halox System is a self-contained generator that provides for the safe, continuous production of chlorine dioxide. The system brings economical CIO2 to a large group of new users for whom the high cost and complexity of generating equipment has been prohibitive.

The system uses an electrolytic method that makes 0.5 to 2.5 kg of CIO2 per day (540 mg/L solutions) using a single precursor, sodium chlorite. This simple-to-operate system is a good solution for small to intermediate sized operations. The patented Halox System is a CIO2 generating process that requires no added acid, no chlorine gas, and no bleach.