A Cleaning In Place (CIP) system is designed to clean a liquid processing plant without the need to strip it down into component parts, and manually clean with scourers etc.
The benefit of a CIP system is that once set-up, it will clean the plant equipment, time and again, while the operators get on with other duties, i.e. it is supposed to be labor saving.
Talking about cleaning results, the following terms are used to define the degree of cleanliness:

• Physical cleanliness – removal of all visible dirt from the surface
• Chemical cleanliness – removal not only of all visible dirt but also of microscopic residues which can be detected by taste or smell but are not visible to the naked eye
• Bacteriological cleanliness – attained by disinfection
• Sterile cleanliness – destruction of all micro-organisms

It is important to note that equipment can be bacteriologically clean without necessarily being physically or chemically clean. However, it is easier to achieve bacteriological cleanliness as a matter of routine if the surfaces in question are first rendered at least physically clean.

Involved Department

Quality department:

Cleaning and sanitization of process plant is one of the most critical aspects of food processing to ensure the health and safety of consumers. Proper cleaning is essential for the production of high quality food products, especially those with extended shelf life. The quality department is in charge of entering the required settings inside the CIP and monitoring the cleaning results.

Maintenance or technical department:

CIP is considered such as utility equipment. Steam, water, compressed air and electricity are necessary for CIP to work. The technical department is in charge of providing utilities for CIP to work and of maintaining the CIP system in good shape.

Process department:

Operators are the persons running the CIP most of the time. They choose equipment they want to clean and the type of cleaning. The process department is running the CIP.

Location

The main part of the CIP is located in the utility room of the factory, the CIP network is going all over the factory in production to clean all types of equipment such as tanks, exchangers, trucks… The CIP is equipped with 4 lines, each line can clean an area composed of up to 16 pieces of equipment.

CIP cleaning

Depending on equipment to clean, there are several cleaning program available in our system:

Recovered Rinse Water Tank

After a detergent cycle, the fresh water used as post-rinse and the terminal sanitizers are collected and re-used as pre-rinse for the next CIP cycle. This saves both water usage and effluent treatment costs.

Recovering cleaning solution

• A tank is used to store a batch of diluted detergent, which is recirculated around the plant and returned back to the detergent tank again.
• Use of a detergent tank saves costs of chemicals.

Reducing cleaning time and working operator time

• Using forward pump to 25.000lts/hr
• Cleaning 4 pieces of equipment at a time
• Fully automatic, it does not need to be handled by operators

Our CIP system contains password that allow trained people to go in advanced parameters.
For operators that are only running CIP in auto mode, the system is really easy to run:

Then they can monitor the status of cleaning on the screen.

Not only ALPES provides you tailormade solutions for CIP system( hot water tank, partitioned or separated tank, agitator Y/N,…) but also keeps innovating. In addition with the basis solution, Alpes is developing a recording system to offer the possibility to survey the main parameters in a logbook:

• reporting and trending of each CIP cycle (each CIP cycle is given a unique cleaning number and can be compared to a validated CIP sequence)
• archiving and cleaning data and sensor readings
• displays uncleaned equipment with last cleaning date and time
• backup alarms and reporting of CIP irregularities
• …

Alpes proposes forward flow detection for both:

• ensuring the cleaning of the area
• avoiding mechanical damages in case of human failure (equipment manual valve kept closed)

We can study any of your specific requests, do not hesitate to contact our engineering unit.