Pasteurisation of PET bottles

One of the very few PET bottling lines for juices and spritzers (juices with mineral water) featuring post-treatment of the bottles in a pasteuriser is up and running at the juice bottlers Mosterei Möhl in Arbon, Switzerland. Since the summer of 2008, the firm has been producing its PET containers in-house on a Contiform, after which they are filled and subsequently rendered biologically stable in a SHIELD double-deck pasteuriser.
The bottles produced in-house on the Contiform S stretch blow-moulding machine are precisely matched to the treatment temperature inside the SHIELD tunnel pasteuriser in terms of their design and their PET mixture. For pasteurising the plastic bottles, it’s important for the temperature inside the pasteuriser to be precisely 64 °C. This can be accurately set using the control system in the SHIELD pasteuriser, which ensures the precisely correct temperatures in all baths, and will decrease the temperature immediately if the machine halts.
This high-precision PU control feature ensures accurately trackable product quality and microbiological safety, thanks to PU values continuously recorded in real-time and a simultaneously computed prediction of the anticipated PU result. Uniform treatment of the products concerned using a spraying system with high flow rates at low pressure is another of the design’s pluses.
In addition, low consumption levels for energy and water, with a central water supply based on the CHESS heating concept and the buffering system inside the individual heating zones are salient features of the SHIELD pasteuriser. Short heat-up times ensure fast operational readiness of the pasteuriser and maximally efficient product treatment.