Sensor is key to Züger Frischkäse’s energy saving CIP system
Credit: Baumer
The food industry is a very important contributor to the Swiss economy, generating around CHF35 billion (€37.5bn), or 3% of its GDP. The manufacture of dairy products is a major contributor to the producing of products, which are very popular within the country and abroad. Züger Frischkäse is one of the country’s largest dairy manufacturers, employing around 300 people at its main plant, turning approximately 2.8 million litres of milk into more than 150 different types of cream cheese products, such as cottage cheese, mozzarella and mascarpone.
The familiar challenges of achieving on-going sustainability, improving processing systems while meeting strict legal requirements, were key factors for Züger to explore technical advances. A particular focus was how could it optimise the CIP (Cleaning-In-Place) processes, and this has resulted in the dairy achieving considerable savings in water and cleaning media, due in part to sensor company Baumer.
Baumer’s range of sensors, encoders and measuring instruments includes the CombiLyz conductivity sensor, a sensor designed to provide precision, combined with speed. Züger uses the sensor for the phase separation of food materials, water and cleaning agents, during a stage of CIP (Cleaning-in-Place). With the short reaction time of the temperature compensation, the CIP control system receives an exact measured value from the sensor in 15 seconds. This ensures that the control system can react quickly to the individual phases by actuating values quickly and precisely – critical in helping to avoid the profound consequences of a faulty, or delayed measuring signal.
For example, in worst cases the CIP tank can become flooded and the system goes down. The design of the CombiLyz features a lid made of PEEK plastic as part of a one-piece hygienic design and a factor is its ability to provide fast temperature compensation, as well as housing the inductive sensor elements for measuring the electric conductivity and the temperature sensor. The sensor tip has a low thermal mass and low thermal transition resistance, enabling the sensor to react quickly, even at significant temperature fluctuations. Whilst sensors with two-part lids, where the temperature sensor is located underneath metal are a little faster, the frequent temperature fluctuations in these types of CIP applications put additional thermal strain on the transition between plastic and metal. The result is frequent cracks can occur, causing sensor failure and therefore unsafe for use of food processing applications.
