ACI bottle-dryers increase hygiene and output

Air Control Industries (ACI) offers bottle and can-drying systems to suit all sizes of filling operations and to meet specific requirements.

Bitburger Braugruppe brews non-pasteurised Pils beer, which calls for stringent hygiene.

It achieves this by minimising the presence of crevices and projections on machinery involved on the production line that could serve as catchment zones and create possible contamination risks.

ACI supplied a bottle-drying system to Bitburger that complies with these standards.

The bottle dryer is one of the ACI low-noise high-throughput units that has been adapted for specific hygiene requirements.

All meeting surfaces that are normally spot-welded or bolted together have seamless welded joins to facilitate cleaning and eliminate bacteria build up.

There is also a special drainage facility for directing moisture to appropriate outlets.

In addition, the housing for the blower (ACI EP10) that delivers the air is mounted on top of the dryer instead of underneath.

This is to allow easy cleaning under the dryer.

Although this ACI drier is a low noise unit, it does not contain any acoustic foam, which could absorb moisture and breed germs.

Instead the machine is equipped with noise baffles at the entry and exit points.

Noise levels are just below 85 dBA.

The EP10 has replaced two other bottle dryers and handles a throughput of 50,000 bottles/hr.

Standard 330ml bottles currently pass through the ACI dryer, but it is expected other sizes will soon be produced.

High volumes of air are delivered at close proximity to the bottles via ACI Jetplate plenums and a pair of Airknives housed in a stainless steel cabinet.

The unit has a footprint of 990 x 1680mm and a height of 2070mm.

Airknives also helped the O'Hanlon Brewery of Devon when it needed to increase output to meet growing demand.

Producing beer was not a problem but getting the product out of the door was.

The inhibiting factor was the O'Hanlon bottling/labelling operation.

Condensation frequently caused delays because filled bottles had to be left to dry before labels could be applied.

This limited production to about 2700 bottles/day.

Condensation also led to double handling.

Bottles once filled were sometimes removed from the filling/labelling line and then reintroduced when dry for labelling.

ACI Airknives have eliminated this problem.

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