Minimization of water and chemical usage in the cleaning in place process of a milk pasteurization plant

Abstract

Cleaning in place (CIP) is a method of cleaning inner surfaces of piping, vessel, equipment, and associated fitting withdisassembly. Although, the CIP processes have been studied continually to improve efficiency for chemical and water consumption,the real conventional plant operations of this process still have been considered as a large amount of consumption.The objectives of this work are to study process behaviors and to find out the optimal draining ratio of the CIP cleaningchemicals in a pasteurized milk plant. To achieve these, mathematical models of the CIP process have been developed andvalidated by the actual process data. With these models, simulation study has been carried out to describe the dynamicbehaviors of the process with respect to the concentrations and contaminations in CIP cleaning chemicals. The optimizationproblem has been formulated and solved using written programs based on MATLAB application program.

Keywords

• cleaning in place
• pasteurized milk
• mathematical model
• optimal draining ratio
• alkali and acid cleaning