With the improvement of people's quality of life and the enhancement of their awareness of advocating health, the market share of various beverage varieties is undergoing great changes. The production and sales of carbonated beverages, which used to occupy half of the consumer market, will decline, while the production and sales of non carbonated beverages such as tea drinks, fruit juice drinks, vegetable juice drinks, dairy products, mineral containing drinking water and sports functional drinks will surge. It is reported that tea drinks are developing rapidly in the United States and Western Europe. In Japan and Taiwan, tea drinks have become the first leading product of beverages.
In view of the great development prospect of non carbonated beverages, the aseptic packaging technology of beverages has emerged in China and will be rapidly promoted and applied. With the aseptic packaging technology, the beverage can be produced and filled at room temperature, thus retaining the nutritional components and flavor characteristics of the product, and extending the shelf life of the product without adding food preservatives and cold storage, which is very in line with people's attitude of advocating safe and healthy drinking. Aseptic packaging technology can also reduce the product packaging cost. Since the sterilization, filling and other production procedures are carried out under normal temperature, manufacturers can choose low-cost heat-resistant PET packaging bottles, and can design and use various unique shape packaging bottles according to product characteristics to meet people's fashion needs. Aseptic filling developed from beer to beverage
Aseptic filling is the first trend in the domestic beer industry. Domestic enterprises such as Guangzhou Light Industry Co., Ltd. and Nanjing Light Industry Co., Ltd. have been put into operation one after another. Old brand manufacturing enterprises are eyeing the rapid growth of beverages and have developed aseptic filling technologies and equipment.
In order to fill drinks under aseptic conditions, Krones introduced a new advanced process with its pet asept system. This process enables the container to be effectively sterilized. A special spray system is used to spray disinfectant and steam onto the bottle. The application of this process can minimize the dosage of disinfectant. This process has high transparency, good flexibility and less occupied area. This newly developed scheme makes the access of the sterile room convenient, and at the same time, it can absolutely ensure that there is no re infection. The system is used for CO2 free and CO2 containing beverages.
The pet asept system is suitable for filling beverages sensitive to microorganisms, such as pure water without carbon dioxide, mineral water, fruit juice, iced tea, vegetable juice, mixed drinks with milk, tea and coffee, and beverages with low requirements, such as non-alcoholic beverages (soft drinks) with carbon dioxide. Ordinary PET bottles with poor heat resistance and easy deformation can be used. The system includes: effective treatment of bottles and caps in the filler and capper, sterile room system, central sterile water treatment equipment, non central sterile filtered air, automatic cleaning and sterilization of internal and external surfaces within the sterile room, preparation system of disinfectant and sterile water, and a product mixing system. All accessories in the sterile area shall be equipped with sterile accessories. In order to record all relevant operation data, production and cleaning processes, as well as parameters crucial to aseptic filling, such as aseptic room status, etc., a linear record archiving system is adopted. The bottle is conveyed to the ejector / spray head / filler / capping unit through the pneumatic conveying device. The star combined conveyor sends the bottle directly to the star inlet of the ejector. Provide filtered sterile air to the air guide device through HEPA filter. The conveying air in the bottle room is led out of the unit to prevent foreign air from entering the sterile room. In the internal bottle treatment process, high concentration peracetic acid and steam are directly introduced into the atomizing nozzle (before the bottle wall treatment part), so as to avoid the influence of temperature on the disinfection effect. In this way, all reaction energy is released at the sterilized part of the bottle.
In recent years, cold aseptic filling is considered as a feasible alternative to hot filling. This method uses standard lightweight bottles rather than heavy thermoformed bottles. Different from hot filling, it is not necessary to use hot filling materials to ensure the sanitation of containers, but to control the sanitary conditions of the filling environment. However, although these aseptic measures can maintain the nutrition of beverages or food, they still need to sterilize the container itself, so higher investment and operation costs are required. Typical aseptic filling lines need bottle washing, connecting channel, aseptic water washing machine, aseptic water generator and equipment for removing cleaning agents and sterilizers. At the same time, these equipment need to be included in the clean room with higher costs, which will bring inconvenience to the operator.
At present, the most innovative PET bottle filling technology directly combines the resin integrated bottle manufacturing system of SIPA company in Italy with the sterile filling and capping system. Jiaziyou, China marketing and sales manager of the company's Beijing Representative Office, said that this integrated equipment (referred to as ASIS) has been successfully developed by SIPA and procomac, and the deimonte plant in Italy is one of the first plants to install this equipment.
The ASIS aseptic filling integration concept is based on the direct connection between the specially designed ECS integrated bottle manufacturing system of SIPA and the aseptic filling equipment of prommac. Simplicity is the main feature of this concept. After PET bottles are produced from ECS integrated equipment in sterile state, they are immediately sent to the sterile filling equipment in the control room. The work of asis system is divided into three basic steps: producing containers on precision integrated equipment and directly using resin particles; Send the blown containers to the filling equipment in a sterile environment; Aseptic filling.
The cold filling product of the aseptic filling integrated equipment completely removes the sterilization process of the bottle, thus shortening the cold filling production line and reducing the cost. In traditional factories, the production of containers is completed outside the clean area, so the containers must be cleaned and sterilized before filling, which requires the installation and maintenance of sterilizer, sterile water generator and washing machine, which is very expensive. At the same time, a large amount of sterilizing agents will be used. The effect of sterilization depends on the initial pollution degree of the container, and the initial pollution degree of the container will change with the change of storage conditions.
The ASIS system reduces the occupation of equipment space, energy consumption, and does not use sterilization agents, thus greatly reducing the generation of waste. The system from bottle production to final capping is carried out in a controlled environment rather than an expensive sterile room, thus reducing the cost and increasing the comfort of the operator.
At present, the market prospect of sterile packaging equipment in the domestic market is broad. In addition to being applied to the production of non carbonated beverages, it will be extended to the production of edible oil and other high concentration liquids. Generally speaking, aseptic filling is better than hot filling, because aseptic filling greatly reduces the time of the product under high temperature, thus better maintaining the nutrition and taste of the product. Before using this aseptic filling equipment, DelMonte purchased thermoformed containers for hot filling. After using asis, you only need to buy resin granule pet.
As a food package, its main requirements are that it is easy to store and transport, reduce the loss of original performance, do not bring additional damage, increase sensory enjoyment, and the price is reasonable. At present, the packaging methods of liquid food mainly include: ordinary packaging, secondary sterilization packaging (including canned, bottled and bagged), hot filling, vacuum packaging, inflatable packaging, radiation sterilization packaging and sterile packaging. Aseptic packaging of liquid food is a new technology developed in recent years. Because of its obvious advantages, it has developed rapidly. Domestic enterprises have invested in the production of, for example, Guangzhou fluke cosmetics equipment Co., Ltd.
A complete aseptic packaging production line includes material (food) sterilization system, aseptic packaging machine, supply and sterilization system of packaging materials and packaging materials, automatic cleaning system, equipment pre sterilization system, aseptic environment maintenance system and automatic control system, etc. So far, the sterilization of materials mainly adopts thermal sterilization. According to the viscosity, thermal sensitivity and production scale of materials, plate type, tube type (coil type or tubular type), scraper type or mixed type heat exchangers can be used respectively. In order to further shorten the heating and cooling time of materials, Jiangsu Meixing Shunfeng Machinery Co., Ltd. has developed and produced direct heating methods such as steam injection type, steam mixing type and superheated water mixing type, Recently, ohmic heater has been developed and produced. At present, the sterilization of packaging materials or packaging containers mainly uses chemical drugs, but after sterilization, it should be thoroughly cleaned and dried to minimize the chemical residues; Most sterile packaging systems use superheated steam or dry air for pre sterilization, and can also use drugs for sterilization.
According to experts, aseptic packaging technology was born in the late 1940s. Since the 1960s, the rapid development of packaging plastics has provided a broad development world for aseptic packaging. As of the 1990s, more than 30 foreign companies have produced various aseptic packaging equipment. There are also many production sterilization systems. Manufacturers of packaging materials and components, and domestic units developing and producing sterile packaging equipment and supporting sterilization systems and packaging materials are also gradually increasing. Since 1998, Jiangsu Meixing Shunfeng Machinery Co., Ltd. has worked closely with users to carry out the research and development of PET bottle aseptic filling production process and equipment. At the end of 2000, a 36000 bottle / hour PET bottled beverage aseptic filling production line was successfully developed and has been put into mass industrial production.
At present, in addition to guangfluke cosmetics equipment Co., Ltd., several enterprises are in the development stage. It is believed that in the next twoorthree years, just like the aseptic filling of pure draft beer, the aseptic filling technology of beverages will be widely promoted and used, and the demand for domestic equipment will surge. It is expected that the aseptic filling production line, which can fill 0.5-2 liters and 5000-25000 bottles / hour, will become the leading product in aseptic packaging equipment in the future.
