Food Cleanroom

Summary of Food and Beverage Purification Engineering: The more people pay attention to diet in modern society, the more they value the quality of ordinary food and beverages and increase the consumption of fresh food. Meanwhile, another significant change is to avoid using additives and preservatives as much as possible.
Foods that have undergone certain treatments that alter their normal microbial supplementation are particularly susceptible to environmental microbial erosion. For example, yogurt, cheese, and other dairy products, fruit juice, flavored milk, and main dishes. Mushroom growth is sometimes carried out in clean rooms to prevent excessive growth of conditional pathogenic spores.

fruit juice
Aseptic products have taken over the market for single pack (250ml) fruit juice and beverages. This market is expanding to other product production lines, including milk beverages, alcohol, water, tomato products, and one liter large packaging.

dairy products
Aseptic processing is often used in the processing of Swiss yogurt, sterile milk or cheese, as well as in the packaging of Swedish sausages.
Some large facilities require a level of 100000 or above (ISO8 and 9). In the United States, Jerome Cheese Company built a $36 million, 140000 square foot cheese and whey products factory in Jerome, Idaho. The factory has four main heating and ventilation systems that can deliver up to 130000 cubic feet of air per minute with a filtration efficiency of 95%, and exchange air 15 to 20 times per hour. The workshop adopts positive pressure, and air flows out from the processing area.

Public and commercial kitchens
It is beneficial to use cleanroom technology in places where a lot of food needs to be prepared. In Amiens, France, Sulzer designed a cleanroom for the central kitchen, where 12000 meals are prepared daily for students, seniors, and city employees. Sulzer is equipped with an ISO Class 5 (Class 100) clean room, as well as necessary heating and refrigeration facilities.

brewery
The brewery has found that in order to protect its draft beer, environmental pollution must be controlled during the filling process. The use of clean rooms for enclosed filling operations, installation of HEPA filters on the ceiling, and perforated floors have become development trends.
South American Columbia Pollution Control Company is a professional company that builds clean environments for food, pharmaceutical, and industrial areas. The company has added ISO Level 5 (Level 100) and ISO Level 6 (Level 1000) cleanrooms to the aseptic filling process for beer, juice, and soda in its design.
In traditional systems, the tunnel pasteurization method performs various high-temperature treatments on products, resulting in changes in their physical properties. In contrast, using lower heat treatment for sterile filling using controlled pasteurization can improve product quality in several aspects.
In terms of beer, sensory characteristics such as aroma, flavor, style, and freshness can be improved. It can also improve the stability of most products and extend their storage period. When used for fruit juice, it avoids prolonged high-temperature treatment like the pipeline disinfection method, thus avoiding nutrient loss. As a result, sensory properties such as aroma, taste, and color have been improved.

Meat processing
A study by the US Department of Agriculture shows that almost 5% of ready to eat meat products in the United States are infected with Listeria monocytogenes, a deadly food borne pathogen that can cause sepsis, meningitis, or meningoencephalitis - a disease that affects brain and spinal cord tissue. For pregnant women, the genus Listeria can cause embryonic death and stillbirth. The expansion of the ready to eat meat products market is a factor in increasing demand for cleanroom technology. Sweden is a pioneer in this field.

bakery
The bakery is gradually adopting cleanroom technology. There are many examples of this in Japan. Commissioned by Nada Ward in Kobe City, Chiyoda Construction Company designed a universal food factory. This factory has a building area of 3000 square meters and is an 8-story building on Rokko Island in Kobe City. It uses clean technology. This factory produces several types of bread, candies, soy tofu, noodles, and several traditional Japanese foods.
The candy industry has adopted biological cleanroom technology. The new, increasingly complex, and creatively packaged candy products have increased the demand for controlled environments (temperature, humidity, bacterial levels, etc.) and automation of the production process to ensure good quality and durability.

device
The semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries are increasingly using isolators to provide ISO level 4 (level 10) or better local environments. Now isolator suppliers, such as LaCalhene, mention in their reports that the food and beverage industry also adopts this technology for the following reasons:
Hygiene - Isolators provide a sterile environment to protect products from contamination from the environment and operators, as well as from the invasion of pathogenic and mutant microorganisms.
Sales - Using isolators means that natural, preservative free products can be produced without relying on traditional anti-corrosion processes, so the texture and taste of the product will not be affected.
Cost saving - Using isolators can reduce the installation and operation costs of ultra clean devices and extend product storage life. The most common and frequently used methods are ingredient preparation, slicing, filling, and transportation of products under sterile conditions. Isolators can be used in disinfection production lines, testing equipment, and R&D laboratories. The most directly affected areas are perishable beverages, dairy products, cold meat and seafood, semi-finished dishes, bakeries and pastries, as well as packaging for fresh products.

The cost of clean rooms in food and beverage industry purification projects varies with cleaning requirements. There are almost no ISO Level 3 and Level 4 (Level 1 and Level 10) devices. The cost of an ISO Level 5 (Level 100) cleanroom is twice that of an ISO Level 6 (Level 1000) cleanroom. The cost significantly decreases with the reduction of cleaning requirements (see Table 2). Only a small portion of food cleanrooms utilize ISO Class 5 (Class 100) space. The truly frequent use of ISO Level 5 standards is in small areas such as filling production lines. Therefore, spatial division based on regions has a significant impact on higher levels.