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Dueling technologies spell success

At Japan’s Daiwa Can, one aseptic PET line uses in-line mold/blow/fill. Right beside it, another line blows bottles and sterilizes them in a second operation just before filling.

In the above drawing of Daiwa Can's ASIS line, two single-stage injection/stretch blow molding machines feed bottles through an
In the above drawing of Daiwa Can's ASIS line, two single-stage injection/stretch blow molding machines feed bottles through an

Once a beverage company decides to aseptically fill polyethylene terephthalate bottles, management still has an important process decision to make. Should it injection-mold and blow preforms inside a sterile area and then fill bottles immediately, also in a sterile environment? Or should it blow bottles outside a sterile area and sterilize them just before they reach the aseptic filling system?

Yes and yes were the answers for Daiwa Can Co. of Japan at its Ooigawa plant in central Japan. (Daiwa Can operates its new lines on behalf of contract packager Sanwa Canning, Ltd.) At the Ooigawa plant, the company installed two complete lines: ASIS (Aseptic Integrated System), an integrated mold/blow/fill line, and CC (Controlled Contamination), a two-step blow/sterilize/fill line. Both were supplied by Procomac of Italy, represented in the U.S. by Procomac North America (St. Petersburg, FL).

ASIS was the first of the two lines to be installed, and it’s been running since May ’99. CC followed in January of this year. Both lines routinely fill 500-mL bottles at about 600/min. Also significant, the products filled on both lines are not fruit juices, whose relatively high acidity levels can kill many forms of bacteria. Instead, Daiwa Can produces low-acid milk-based products with pH levels that make them a perfect environment for mold and yeast growth if sterilization of packaging materials isn’t sufficiently aggressive. Sterilization is, however, plenty aggressive at Daiwa Can, where the standard is a 6D log reduction in bacteria.

Shelf life on bottles produced on either line is six months at ambient temperatures. The beverages filled are popular alternatives to juices and carbonated soft drinks in Japan.

Versatility is a key

Why did Daiwa Can opt for what might be called “opposing” technologies rather than find the advantages in one and standardize on that? Because picking one technology would have minimized versatility. To understand why, it helps to explore the fundamental layout of each line, beginning with ASIS (Illustration A).

This line incorporates two ECS 48/80 single-stage injection/stretch blow molding systems from SIPA (Vittorio Veneto, Italy). Each SIPA has two linear banks of 20 blow molds each, and the banks are arranged parallel to each other so that discharge from each SIPA is two-up. That means freshly blown bottles emerge from the SIPA equipment four-across. A pneumatically controlled gating device combines the four rows into two, and then another combiner single-files the bottles and conveys them into the filler.

All conveying and combining are done via Procomac’s Convair C air conveyors. These are fully enclosed and overpressured stainless-steel tracks from which bottles are suspended by their neck rings and propelled along by HEPA-filtered sterile air. These transport systems maintain bottle sterility as the bottles move toward filling.

Both blow-molding cabinets, the Convair C air conveyors, the 100-valve Procomac Fillstar FX electronic flow-meter rotary filler and the 20-station rotary capper are enclosed in a Class 10ꯠ clean room that totals approximately 800 sq’. While ambient air might contain millions of particles per cu’, the air inside the clean room is filtered so that it has no more than 10ꯠ particles per cu’. Operators entering this clean room must pass through a sterile-air “shower” and don masks, gloves and shoe coverings to minimize contamination they could otherwise bring into the room.

Within this clean room, the two SIPA blow molders and the filler/capper block are each enclosed in sealed cabinets. Within these cabinets, Class 100 air is maintained. Operators access these machines through glove ports. These allow operators to clear a jam, for instance, without breaking asepsis, because even though their hands may be inside a Class 100 area, the glove-port material still separates them from contact with the equipment.

Unlike injection-molded preforms and stretch-blown bottles, caps are not produced inside a Class 100 enclosure. These are sterilized by a Sterilcap W3-Twin machine, also supplied by Procomac. Outside the class 10ꯠ clean room, caps are fed into the Sterilcap machine’s elevator. The elevator is sealed and air is filtered to a Class 10ꯠ level. When caps reach the top of the elevator, gravity takes them down a track through a spray of 65°C oxonia. Next is a hydrogen peroxide sterilizing zone, then a rinse of sterile water and finally drying with pressurized sterile air.

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