Capping Off A Clean Environment For Your Favorite Beverage
The next time you pop off, twist off or pull off that cap from your favorite beverage bottle keep in mind that you are about to put your mouth around a glass surface usually without even thinking about it. Wow! Really? Yes.
When we live in an era where people are using disinfectants for their hands, wipes for any kitchen or eating surface it is interesting how much trust we have in placing that screw top bottle into our mouths without a second thought about where it has been.
To be fair, the bottling process for any beverage that is sold in the retail market is strictly controlled by state and federal regulations. Interestingly, the actual filling of the bottle with the liquid and capping process are actually done in a class 10,000 or better clean room environment.
When the term Class 10 , 100, 0r 10,000 is used, it usually means that the area, when measured for a certain sized particulate per cubic foot, needs to be at or below that required Class rating. And the rating is significant.
For example, a Class 10 rating means that when tested with the correct digital equipment the area only has 10 particles per cubic foot at a 0.3 micron level. This is clean room clean. For comparison, your home environment probably has a level exceeding 300,000 particles per cubic foot at 0.3 microns. Big difference.
Understand that most bottling plants are large factory like structures using large process equipment, conveyor belts and equipment transfer stations; for the most part a fairly dirty environment. In order to keep the actual bottling process areas (filling stations) within the required class ratings they have to use HEPA filtered air to either wash the bottles as they are being filled or maintain a class rating for the entire bottling room.
Pure Air Systems has provided a number of its commercial grade HEPA filtration systems for these bottling applications. The PAS product line includes HEPA systems rated from 300 CFM to 2000 CFM all using variable speed motors for finite HEPA air volume control.
The PAS HEPA units are small enough to be placed close to ( less than 12″) the actual filling station and wash the liquid filling process with HEPA filtered air so that no airborne contaminants will enter the bottle or cap during the filling and capping process.
So the next time you get ready to take a drink of that cold soda or brew, you’ll be comforted to know that the cap and bottle top were HEPA filter clean when they left the bottling plant.
For more information on the Pure Air Systems line of HEPA and media based air filtration systems go to our website at: www.pureairsystems.com