Food Processing Plant

A pet food processing plant in Nebraska uses Hydroflex cooling tunnels, which have 3 washing and rinsing zones with a tank capacity of about 2,000 gallons. The Food and Drug Administration ‘FDA’ requires a minimum residual of 0.3 ppm free chlorine in the wash zones.

Due to the high organic contamination of the cooling water, the sensor of the competitor analyzer fouled quickly, causing drifting and residual control issues. The plant decided to implement measures to reduce the speed of the sensor fouling including filter systems, increased flow rate, and weekly manual cleaning and recalibration.

The pet food processing plant asked Kuntze’s distributor to resolve the problem. The distributor suggested an amperometric measurement system from Kuntze Instruments. The analyzer uses a solid-state bare sensor with two gold band electrodes for easily interpretable measurements. The sensor also features Kuntze’s patented Automatic Sensor Cleaning technology (ASR®).

The Kuntze analyzer outperformed the previous system by delivering consistently reliable measurements while significantly reducing the required preventative maintenance and operational expenses.

To compare performance, Kuntze Instruments calculated the process capability index (Ĉpk). Before the Kuntze analyzer, the biocide residual did not fall between limits (Ĉpk = -0.38). After switching to Kuntze control, the average biocide residual fell within limits (Ĉpk = 0.03).

Because of the addition of the Kuntze analyzer, there were significant cost benefits: Elimination of the 100-micron pre-filter system (savings: $5200 filter media plus 13 labor hours/year), reduction of analyzer sensor cleaning and maintenance (20 labor hours/year), reduction of cooling water process loss (615,000 gallons/year), reduction of chemical costs due to less overfeeding, and reduction of corrosion of plant infrastructure.