For consumers and the government, a maximum of safety and quality in the production of food is essential. In order to ensure the highest standards of hygiene, food producers and processors are obliged to clean their machinery regularly via washdowns. To guarantee that vacuum pumps are effectively protected from the used aggressive cleaning media, Leybold has developed a series of Hygienic Enclosures. The vacuum specialist offers users these stainless steel housings in seven different sizes, tailor made for each vacuum pump.
Risk of contamination eliminated
In the food industry, vacuum pumps are often placed directly next to the processing and packaging lines and thus not implemented in the equipment. On the one hand, this leads to a higher vacuum performance because, losses in pumping speed over longer pipelines are avoided. A direct positive consequence of this, are shorter process cycles and a better product quality. On the other hand, unprotected pumps are directly exposed to aggressive cleaning media during the rinsing processes. Over time, this leads to corroded vacuum pumps, shorter life cycles, higher costs and ultimately even to food contamination.
Effectively protected in stainless steel enclosures
In order to counteract these risks, Leybold has developed a new protection concept with the Hygienic Enclosures. Encased by these stainless steel enclosures, the vacuum pumps can be positioned near machines and systems without any problems. „On the basis of the protected Leybold vacuum pumps we can create better and more robust solutions for the demanding food applications“, emphasizes the responsible product manager Niels Gorrebeeck. „Of course, this applies all the more to applications such as stuffers, tumblers and of course packaging machines, where the machines and systems are cleaned and disinfected particularly frequently and intensively,“ the product manager explains.
Tailor made & easy to install
Gorrebeeck explains that these stainless steel enclosures are tailor made for each vacuum pump. As a result each enclosed pump can run constantly on every working pressure. The only limitation is the maximal ambient temperature for the enclosure. Nevertheless, the normal working temperature in F&P environments are around 10 °C, we qualified most enclosures up to 25 °C. Further all the enclosures are offered as a Do It Yourself kit and can be as well installed as commissioned by the user themselves without great effort. „These properties make of the Hygienic Enclosures a cost-effective, sustainable solution. In the end, Hygienic Enclosures makes investments in expensive piping obsolete and at the same moment they offer a better pumping speed performance“, argues Niels Gorrebeeck.
Sustainable solution
Incidentally, this also applies not least with regard to future packaging concepts. Gorrebeeck believes that the industry is also well equipped for this with the new enclosures: „Regardless of which solutions will prevail, food applications can be operated from today more hygienically, ergonomically as well as flexibly. Leybold can successfully accompany these processes into the future with our holistic solution approaches.“
