Claranor announces PET preform sterilisation

With commercial activity starting 2010, Claranor has introduced the Pulsed Light Sterilisation technology in the beverage and dairy industry. This technology enables an extremely rapid surface sterilisation without chemicals, with low energy consumption and operating costs, and limited capex. Claranor has installed >200 cap and cup sterilisation units throughout the world on PET lines as well as on linear cup fillers, adapted to ultra-clean and ESL requirements.

Despite having the Claranor chemical free solution for cap sterilisation, owners of PET lines had no way to decontaminate preforms without chemical sterilants.

In collaboration with 1Blow, French manufacturer of blow-molding machines, Claranor has performed a series of microbial testing demonstrating a high killing rate on preforms while flashing the preform just after the oven.

 On the growing markets of juices, soft-drinks, bottled water, low carbonated soft drinks, products are mainly filled on PET ultra-clean-filling lines, where the packaging decontamination is performed with H2O2. The reference micro-organism for these low pH products is Aspergillus brasiliensis, a mould.

Claranor has inoculated 0,5l transparent preforms with Aspergillus brasiliensis at levels > 10E4, and checked the decontamination obtained

  • Only in the oven of a blow-molding machine
  • Only with a pulsed light treatment
  • After combination of heat of the oven and Pulsed

The test has been performed on a 0.5L preform format as it reflects the current global trend for small format on the beverage market, driven by consumer demand on health and convenience.

In this combination of treatments, there is no effect of heat on the neck that remains cold, but where pulsed light is the strongest. On the contrary, the effect of pulsed light is total on the internal and external surface of the neck, and the rays arriving inside the body increase the effect of the heat.

The industrialization of this process is accessible, as the pulsed light reflector can continuously and instantly treat preforms passing from the oven to the blowing machine, with only 50cm straight section. The treatment can reach 100.000 bph.

The external surface of the preform is also decontaminated, body + neck.

OEM have shown great interest in this innovative patented solution previewed at the Petnology conference in Nuremberg on 8 November and presented in Bangkok on 30 November at the Aseptipak forum.

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