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11/13/2012

New KHS Innofill Glass Micro filler for small and medium-sized breweries and soft drinks companies

With the Innofill Glass Micro a new filler is being launched to market for small and medium-sized breweries and soft drinks companies. As one of the technological leaders in the field of filling equipment, KHS has incorporated numerous components into its Innofill Glass Micro that have been tried and tested in the high performance range. These include filling valves, capping elements, lifting elements, and drive and control systems, for example. The Innofill Glass Micro also incorporates many of the technological advantages common to high-performance machinery, such as its high fill level accuracies, low oxygen pickup in the product, and low consumption of CO2. The Innofill Glass Micro is designed for the filling of beer and carbonated, non-alcoholic beverages in glass and aluminum bottles. Plastic bottles can also be processed as an option. The filling system outputs 6,000 to 20,000 bottles per hour holding 0.1 to 3 liters of product. Filling temperatures for beer lie between 4 and 16°C, with soft drinks temperatures of up to 20°C feasible. The filler can be monoblocked with either one or two capping systems as required. If desired, it can also be monoblocked with a single-channel rinsing system. The machine’s open, modular, space-saving design and functional units not being complex mean it can be installed and commissioned in a very short space of time. The filler is also hygienically designed with its transparent housing, sloped, stainless steel front table, bottle conveyors with side openings, and the consistent use of stainless steel in general, among other features. Product, gas, and CIP media are fed in using aseptic sealing systems that prevent the formation of any deposits. The Innofill Glass Micro operates on the computer-controlled, pneumatic, single-chamber DPG-ZMS filling system. This ensures a low-oxygen filling process – so essential when bottling beer – and results in targeted savings in CO2. Thanks to use of the double purging system the consumption of CO2 is under 250 g/hl of beverage. One very special highlight of the new filler is twin valve control which has been completely redeveloped by KHS, where two filling valves are combined as one process unit. This means that the gas processes (evacuation and snifting) for two adjacent filling valves are controlled by one shared gas control valve so that every second gas cylinder, complete with all of its electrical and pneumatic control elements, can be omitted. The product valve cylinders are controlled by one solenoid valve also shared by two filling stations. As a result, the number of electropneumatic control units required to date has been halved. All told, the filling system has been considerably simplified through the application of twin valve control. In turn, this cuts operating costs, makes element changeovers faster, reduces the number of spare parts needed, and decreases maintenance effort. To sum up, in the Innofill Glass Micro companies operating in the low to medium capacity range now have at their disposal a filling system that gives them best filling quality with a compact and hygienic design, is easy to operate and maintain, and is extremely flexible and robust with a long service life.