Just the right dosage

How exact­ly should laun­dry deter­gent be dosed so that the laun­dry is com­plete­ly clean, with­out the envi­ron­ment suf­fer­ing? Does the dish­wash­er deter­gent com­part­ment have to be filled com­plete­ly in order to achieve streak-free clean­li­ness? But then it might not be pos­si­ble to close the draw­er prop­er­ly? These are just a few of the ques­tions that are fre­quent­ly dis­cussed on the Inter­net for exam­ple. These con­sid­er­a­tions are being elim­i­nat­ed, as laun­dry and dish­wash­ing deter­gent is avail­able in pre-dosed pack­ages, so-called pods or tabs. Their appli­ca­tion ensures that only the right quan­ti­ty of deter­gent rec­om­mend­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er is used per wash cycle. Envi­ron­men­tal­ly harm­ful over­dos­es are avoid­ed. And the laun­dry is not over exposed.

Vis­cotec hygien­ic pumps are used for fill­ing vis­cous clean­ing agents into these pods or tabs. For exam­ple, in coop­er­a­tion with the machine builder Har­ro Höfliger, high­ly indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion and pack­ag­ing equip­ment is devel­oped that enables 24/7 pro­duc­tion and oper­ates ful­ly auto­mat­i­cal­ly. There are a num­ber of points that need to be con­sid­ered dur­ing the man­u­fac­ture of the tabs and pods: In order to obtain the use­ful pads, the deter­gent is dosed onto a water-sol­u­ble film, which then dis­solves in the wash­ing machine or dish­wash­er. “Com­pa­nies come to us with a design where the shape, num­ber of cham­bers and fill­ing mate­r­i­al is already spec­i­fied,” explains Jür­gen Luka, Engi­neer­ing & Inno­va­tion Ser­vices (EIS) depart­ment at Har­ro Höfliger. “For exam­ple, they would like a pouch with three cham­bers con­tain­ing 15 grams of pow­der, five grams of gel and five grams of liq­uid. Both the gel and the liq­uid can be applied with the Vis­cotec pumps.”

Detergent pods

The mate­r­i­al to be dosed for the deter­gent pods has a gel-like, vis­cous tex­ture and pos­es no real chal­lenges for Viscotec’s dos­ing pumps. How­ev­er, there are two spe­cial advan­tages of using pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pumps for dos­ing: On the one hand, they are easy to clean auto­mat­i­cal­ly, and, on the oth­er hand, they have a par­tic­u­lar­ly short cycle time, which is achieved by only employ­ing high-qual­i­ty mate­ri­als. Vis­cotec hygien­ic pumps and dis­pensers can be thor­ough­ly cleaned with­in the dos­ing process with­out the need to dis­man­tle them (CIP). Auto­mat­ic rins­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly advan­ta­geous when chang­ing the col­or of the dos­ing mate­r­i­al, for exam­ple. It saves time and down­times are great­ly reduced.

Dishwasher tabs

Par­tic­u­lar­ly abra­sive sus­pen­sions are dosed into dish­wash­er tabs. One chal­lenge here is to coun­ter­act sed­i­men­ta­tion of any solids dur­ing the entire dos­ing process. Vis­cotec has met this chal­lenge by cir­cu­lat­ing the dos­ing mate­r­i­al with­in the com­plete sys­tem. It remains in con­stant motion. Fill­ing takes place with­in the flow move­ment. This con­cept is made pos­si­ble by inte­grat­ing a bypass into the dos­ing pump. In this bypass, the mate­r­i­al can be kept in con­stant motion dur­ing the dos­ing process and also when the sys­tem is at a stand­still. This also pre­vents sed­i­men­ta­tion in the pump feed. The dos­ing pumps com­ply with the require­ments of the GMP and FDA guide­lines. The com­plete fill­ing sys­tem con­sists of a stor­age con­tain­er with agi­ta­tor, an RD hygien­ic feed pump and sev­er­al hygien­ic dis­pensers. A fur­ther chal­lenge is the abra­sive­ness of the mate­ri­als to be dosed: The abra­sive dos­ing mate­ri­als usu­al­ly cause above-aver­age wear in fill­ing sys­tems. Thanks to the stain­less steel/elastomer pair­ing in the rotor and sta­tor of the Vis­cotec dos­ing pumps, par­tic­u­lar­ly long ser­vice lives are achieved in con­trast to steel/steel com­bi­na­tions in pis­ton pumps. By adopt­ing the end­less pis­ton prin­ci­ple used in the Vis­cotec prod­ucts, the mate­ri­als are dosed or filled pure­ly vol­u­met­ri­cal­ly and almost wear-free. A deci­sive ben­e­fit of this tech­nol­o­gy lies in the result­ing con­vey­ing cham­ber, whose vol­ume remains absolute­ly con­stant dur­ing movement.