Faster Blending with Less Foam, Quick Cleanup

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In 2007, the quality systems manager of a major manufacturer of carbonated and non-carbonated drinks knew that changes were desperately needed. “We were at our breaking point in the syrup room.” With SKU’s high, new flavors being added at a fast pace, all with CIP runs in between, the operation was hitting its limit 10% of the time. Additionally, their ready-to-drink tea products were cloudy and had sediment particles in the bottle.

The company was using a Tri-Blender to mix tea powder and water in their concentrate blending operation. Their 300 gallon tank could only hold two units of a full production run because so much foam was created during blending. After the run, cleaning the equipment took large amounts of water and time to remove the residual foam and rinse excess water from the tank. Batching tea was taking three to four hours.

The company arranged a number of tests using various types of powder mixing equipment. The DSI Mixsys was one of the units tested. A variety of products, including the troublesome tea products, were selected. The DSI Mixsys equipment outperformed all of the other blending equipment tested in speed and product quality. Stability tests show clear product with no sediment 90 days later.

Improving product quality was just the beginning. The plant realized major time savings and increased flexibility.

Multi-tasker The DSI Mixsys is used for drum unloading, product mixing, and batch transfer. Mixsys is accessible from floor level, eliminating the need for a batch platform and resulting in a safer, cleaner work environment.

Quick-start Drum unloading formerly took up to seven minutes to unload a 30 gallon drum. Now these small drums are unloaded in less than two minutes.

More time for new products Mixing/recirculation time went from 15 to 8 minutes—almost half the original time. A full tea production run went from taking three to four hours down to one and a half to two hours. Production runs for diet carbonated beverages are faster by about 30 minutes, due to the new ability to meter water and batch at the same time.

Nice finish Cleanup after a run used to take 30-45 minutes and consisted of spraying the large amounts of foam--literally beating the foam from the tank walls. Rinsing and repeating followed until the tank was finally clean. Today less foam is created during tea blending using the DSI Mixsys. But the little foam that does remain is quickly and completely removed by the liquid ring pump on Mixsys. That means a much faster changeover for this plant.

After seeing what the Mixsys could do to improve production efficiency and product quality, the decision to add the second system was an easy one.
“With all the SKU’s we make now, this is becoming very important since our warehouses aren’t growing,” said the quality systems manager.

The payback on the two Mixsys systems comes in the improved efficiency of the entire operation and through new flexibility they didn’t used to have.

“The ability to blend on one system and sanitize the other means I don’t have to stop blending at all. We can blend more flavors in one day with smaller batch sizes.”

Improves Product Quality - Eliminates Unblended Product

Reduces Processing Time

Operator-Friendly

Economical Operation and Maintenance

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