Brew and beverage industry

Mixed oxidant is a proven disinfectant for improving the quality and safety of drinking water with significant economic savings — from rural communities to large cities, and at food and beverage facilities. It is ideally suited to soft drink bottling, brewing, dairy farms, and dairy and food processing.

Clean-in-place with electrolysed water in breweries

Brewers need consistent product, but bacterial contaminants in the brewery frequently get in the way. Biofilm control usually relies on clean-in-place (CIP): cleaning complete plant items or pipeline circuits without dismantling or opening them, with little or no manual work.

CIP usually involves caustic and acid wash steps followed by a sanitiser — crucial for killing beer-spoilage bacteria. Common sanitisers are diluted from concentrated hydrogen peroxide, chlorine dioxide or peracetic acid. Dilution carries risks and is hard to manage, and some sanitisers contain stabilisers such as heavy metals that must be thoroughly rinsed off to avoid toxic residues.

Acid electrolysed water (AcEW) is a relatively new sanitising technique for brewery equipment. Experiments showed that 30% AcEW (free chlorine above 17 mg/L) was an effective alternative to conventional sanitisers such as 2% peracetic acid. Industrial-scale tests established an AcEW clean-in-place procedure for a bright beer tank that takes only 10 minutes and needs no final water rinse.

Lu Chen, Rong Chen, Hua Yin, Jianxin Sui and Hong Lin — © 2013 The Institute of Brewing & Distilling