18 Feb 2014 New patents granted for Radical Waters

In early 2007 Radical Waters established this CIP application for the beverage industry. The beverage patent granted pertains to the use of ECA in the manufacturing, processing, packaging and dispensing of beverages.

More specifically, it refers to the use of ECA solutions during CIP, a cleaning regime used in all beverage facilities. CIP is used during production when changing from one product to another and at specific times to eliminate the growth of harmful bacteria caused by left over product in beverage lines, tanks and fillers.

Previously, beverage plants would use traditional chemicals, such as caustic soda (which is highly toxic and needs to be handled with care), acids and water at high temperatures to clean and sanitise to achieve similar results. However, heat requires energy, which is costly for beverage producers, chemicals which are costly and huge volumes of water (that requires heating) which in some countries is a scarce commodity.

Typically, traditional chemical CIP steps would involve: a hot water rinse followed by application of a chemical detergent, followed by another hot water rinse, followed by application of a chemical disinfectant, followed by yet a further hot water rinse, all of which require significantly more time, energy and water than cleaning with Radical Waters’ ECA solutions.

Philip Nel, Vice President, Technical & R&D at Radical Waters explains, “While no plant is the same, lost production time can be very expensive. On average, conventional CIP cycles can take up to 90 minutes or more to complete. By replacing traditional chemical CIP with Radical Waters’ green ECA detergent and disinfectant solutions for CIP, the intermediate hot water rinse steps are eliminated, reducing cleaning to a four-step process with a considerable reduction in the loss of valuable production time and savings in energy and water use.”

Radical Waters ECA CIP benefits are considerable and include:

• Effective microbial decontamination
• Reduction or complete elimination of the use of costly and harmful chemicals
• Elimination or substantial reduction in the need to heat the detergents resulting in significant energy savings.
• Elimination of flavour carry over
• Significant water savings in most beverage plants
• Very significant time savings resulting in increased production

In contrast to traditional chemicals, Radical Waters anolyte solutions are produced at a neutral pH, i.e. neither too acidic nor too alkaline, which makes them completely safe when in contact with humans and as an effluent in the environment. The solutions can be used without any requirement for safety or protective gear.

At this pH, the main active component is hypochlorous acid which is a very effective sanitiser and is up to 300 times more effective than sodium hypochlorite.

Radical Waters Chairman, Dion Friedland comments, “Radical Waters’ 17 years of research and practical application of ECA technology has resulted in us being granted this extremely important beverage patent which will have an enormous impact on increasing the profitability of the beverage industry worldwide.

“Radical Waters already has many ECA device installations in leading multinational beverage plants in 25 countries including the US, China, Germany, France, Japan, the Philippines, Africa, India, Latin America and many other countries.”

The patent abstract summarizes the patent as follows: A system using electrochemically-activated water (ECAW) for manufacturing, processing, packaging, and dispensing beverages. The system uses ECAW solutions in the beverage facility clean-in-place system to achieve improved microbial control while greatly reducing water usage and reducing or eliminating the use of chemical detergents and disinfectants. Click here for more patent information:

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