23.09.2009

Saving energy by using Velcorin

Leverkusen – It is the goal of the beverage industry to offer consumers clean, stable, healthy and fresh-tasting products. The demands of the customers are steadily growing – as is the pressure on costs. The Velcorin technology developed by specialty chemicals group LANXESS can help the sector reduce production costs since switching from hot fill to cold fill technology in the manufacture of fruit-juice-based beverages saves energy. In addition, thinner PET bottles can be used in cold filling. This lightweight, inexpensive packaging material is often unsuitable for hot fill processes since bottles made from it can deform when exposed to heat.

 

With Velcorin cold fill technology, the beverages are, depending on the formulation, mixed, ideally flash pasteurized and then filled at ambient temperature, with Velcorin being added during filling. This technology reduces costs mainly by allowing a consistent recovery, in plate heat exchangers, of the energy used for heating and through the savings made on the material for the bottles. With non self contained processes such as pasteurization or hot filling, no such energy recovery is possible. In addition, during cold filling the liquid is only exposed to heat for a short time, which means that the vitamin content and the aroma of the beverage are much less affected.

 

Only minimal modifications are needed to convert an existing hot fill line to the Velcorin technology. Technical requirements are the installation of an optimized energy recovery system (cross-flow heat exchanger) and a Velcorin metering unit. Energy consumption by the filling process can be optimized by applying the pinch point method. In such a “design process”, the ingoing and outgoing energy at different temperature levels can be optimized until the difference reaches the desired minimum value at the pinch point.

 

To complement its range of products, LANXESS also offers suitable metering technology – combined with customer-oriented service. The easy-to-use metering units are marketed under the trade name Velcorin DT.

The modern stabilizer Velcorin is approved for use in a very wide range of beverages and is highly effective against harmful microorganisms even at low dosages, without affecting the taste. According to Dr. Edwin Ritzer, head of Technical Marketing for Beverage Technology in the Material Protection Products business unit: “Velcorin has established itself all over the world as a flexible, cost-effective and innovative method of cold sterilization. It also meets the most important consumer requirement, namely taste.”

 

Detailed information about LANXESS’s Velcorin technology can be found on the new website at www.velcorin.com.

LANXESS is a leader in specialty chemicals with sales in 2008 of EUR 6.58 billion and currently around 14,335 employees in 23 countries. The company is represented at 46 production sites worldwide. The core business of LANXESS is the development, manufacture and sale of plastics, rubber, intermediates and specialty chemicals.

 

Germany:  September 23, 2009

 

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