Improving the cleaning of tanks

Hygiene is important in all processes, because the production cannot be run if it is possible that microbes would infiltrate the process through surfaces and equipment that are used in association with the tank. Contamination on tank surfaces can be fatal to the product quality due to long processing times with nutritious raw materials, where microbial growth leads to discarding large product batches. It has been proved that specific hydrodynamic parameters control cleaning in closed process systems. The fluid flows are important both in production and in cleaning. Computational Fluid Dynamics [“CFD”] is a tool for improving the hygienic design of equipment components and their integration into the process line. The hygienic state of tanks is important in order to avoid contamination of the end product and, therefore, tank cleaning is receiving increasing attention. The specific cases studied comprise dairy- and brewery-process tanks. CFD is used in many applications to model the bulk parameters of fluid flows. Recently, model developments have made it possible to resolve what happens in specific positions on and near walls, which is of interest in the study of cleaning processes. CFD models of tanks exist for purposes of optimizing the operation of processes such as mixing, heating, and cooling.