Objective Filled and sealed food cans are handled in a water-carrying piping system for being thermally treated. The water is intended as transport means and as thermal process fluid. The thermal process comprehends heating, maintaining the temperature (e.g. 125 deg. C for 60 minutes) and cooling. There is provided a separate circuit for each of these processed steps. The circuit is operating under pressure and a special feeder has been developed in order to feed the cans in the overpressure piping section. The plant operates continuously and fully automically with a significant less energy consumption in comparison with the traditional batch system. The proposed system is new.At a productionrate of 19.000.000 Kg canned fish total saving in operation cost compared with autoclave system is about 730.000 DEM/a. Product quality is very good and constant.The HYDROKLAV System serves to sterilize tinned fish. The capacity of the HYDROKLAV SYSTEM is 36,000 cans/h; the cans may have different sizes.The cans coming from 6 filling and sealing lines are handled in three parallel working pipelines. Before entering the HYDROKLAV System the cans are automatically inserted into two layer containers and discharged from the containers after having passed the piping.The containers filled with the cans glide on a track into the insert tank filled with water and are transported, together with the water, through the piping system. The flow of the water as well as the pressure needed for the sterilization temperature of 110 to 125 deg. C are produced by special jet pumps, integrated in the transportation piping. Water is rotated through the jet pump by a circuit with an external pump. The containers pass successively the insert line, where the sterilization pressure is set up, the sterilization line, where the tinned fish is treated thermically,and the cooling line, where the cans are cooled down rapidly and besides this pressure drop is effected by a special throttle. The water of each of these lines is recycled, so energy is only needed for heating up the cans and containers.Since the cans are filled with different kinds of fish and sauces, various sterilization conditions are needed, which have to be defined by temperature and time. At 900 m total length of the sterilization line the temperature is maintained by several twin tube heating sections with live steam, where each heating section is controlled separately. In order to adjust the sterilization time between 20 and 50 minutes, the transportation velocity is regulated by the water circulation within the jet pumps. The HYDROKLAV System is to be installed in a new production plant of RICHTER + GREIF Feinkost GmbH for the purpose of economical sterilization of the main products.Alternatively to the HYDROKLAV System conventional batch autoclaves can be used. Recentsterilization systems usually work automatically and therefore need correpsonding stacking, inserting and discharging systems for the batch autoclaves. The price of these complete systems is about the same as the price of the HYDROKLAV System with corresponding capacity. Programme(s) ENG-ENDEMO C - Programme (EEC) of demonstration projects and industrial pilot projects (EEC) in the energy field, 1985-1989 Topic(s) 3.4 - INDUSTRY Call for proposal Data not available Funding Scheme DEM - Demonstration contracts Coordinator Kraftanlagen AG EU contribution No data Address Im Breitspiel 7 69126 Heidelberg Germany See on map Total cost No data
