A cheese and whey processing plant in the Midwest was manually dispensing clean-in-place (CIP) chemistry to the brine and whey ultra-filtered (UF) membrane balance tanks in their plant.
Manual dispensing of chemistry often resulted in:
- Increased risk to chemical exposure for employees
- Inaccurate and inconsistent dispensing of chemistry
- Increased faulty washes from human error
Operators frequently experienced splashing when dumping the chemistry and it was also not uncommon to see open chemical drums in the production area posing not only safety concerns but the possibility of cross contamination.
Inaccurate and inconsistent dispensing of chemistry shocks the membranes, causing the membranes to be outside the parameters of the pH and ultimately deteriorating the life of the membrane over time.
Additionally, the plant experienced several instances of bad washes, requiring the plant to reclean the membrane, costing the plant 7 hours a year in production time equating
to $7,000.
The plant was looking for a safer and more efficient way to dispense CIP chemistry to their membrane systems and turned to Ecolab
for help.
