Customer Case: Upgrade of Filtration System for a South American Juice Processing Enterprise Project Background
A medium-sized juice processing enterprise located in South America mainly produces high-end concentrated juice and NFC (non-concentrated reconstituted) juice. Its products are sold in both local and European markets. The enterprise's original filtration system was an old plate-and-frame filter, which had long suffered from low filtration efficiency, frequent filter material replacements, and time-consuming and labor-intensive cleaning processes. These problems severely hindered the improvement of production capacity and the stable control of product quality.
The juice processed on this customer's production line has a high viscosity and contains suspended substances such as pulp fibers and pectin. Traditional filtration equipment not only has significant fluctuations in filtration accuracy, but also requires the disassembly of a large number of plates and frames for each cleaning, with the single cleaning process taking over 3 hours. This results in frequent shutdowns of the production line and the daily output always failing to exceed 70% of the designed capacity.
Solution
After conducting a detailed investigation of the customer's production conditions, our technical team recommended a single-bag filter system of model JYSF-4#-304SS to the customer. This equipment adopts a side-in and bottom-out flow design, is equipped with a sanitary centrifugal pump and a complete 304 stainless steel pipeline. The maximum processing flow rate can reach 1000L/H, perfectly meeting the customer's single-batch production requirements.
The core advantage of the equipment precisely targets the customers' pain points: The quick-opening ring-type cover combined with the clamp-type inlet and outlet enables the filter bag replacement to be completed within 10 minutes, significantly reducing the cleaning downtime; The 304 stainless steel cylinder with internal and external mirror-polished treatment eliminates the risks of juice residue and microbial growth, ensuring stable product quality across batches; The silicone rubber sealing ring is reliably sealed under a working pressure of 0.6 MPa, with no leakage risk.
It is worth noting that the industrial water hardness in the area where this client is located is relatively high. Previously, the equipment pipelines often suffered from scaling problems. The complete 304 stainless steel pipeline system provided by our company effectively solved this problem. It has excellent corrosion resistance and the inner walls remain as smooth as new even after long-term operation of the equipment.
Application Effect
After the system was installed and debugged, the client conducted a one-month trial run. The actual data indicated:
The turbidity of the juice has decreased from the original average of 12 NTU to below 2 NTU. The product's clarity has met the standards required for export to the European market, and the customer's quality inspection department highly praised the stability of the filtration effect.
The time for filter bag replacement and system cleaning has been reduced from over 3 hours to approximately 15 minutes. The daily output of the production line has increased by about 25%, while energy consumption and labor costs have decreased simultaneously.
The PP filter bags are paired with 304 stainless steel ring mouths, ensuring stable filtration accuracy. The lifespan of a single filter bag is longer than what the customers expected, and the replacement operation is simple. No professional tools are required. The on-site operators can complete the task independently after a brief training.
The pressure gauge and exhaust valve equipped enable the operators to monitor the system status in real time, promptly discharge the gas, and prevent damage to the pump unit and filter bags caused by cavitation and abnormal pressure. The equipment has been running continuously without any failure or shutdown so far.
Customer feedback
The production supervisor of the client stated in the project summary: "The operability of this filtration system exceeded our expectations. The quick-opening structure made the workers very willing to use it. The most crucial point is that the quality consistency of the filtered juice is extremely good, and there is no longer the need to repeatedly adjust parameters for each batch as before. We are already considering configuring the same equipment for another production line."
The successful implementation of this project has further enhanced our company's reputation in the food processing industry in South America. Currently, this client has recommended this equipment to two local industry partners, and new cooperation intentions are under negotiation.