Aseptic Filler Introduction in Food&Beverage Processing

Aseptic filling technology is a rapidly developing beverage processing technology. it requires packaging materials, materials and filling environment are all aseptic. Aseptic filling of liquid beverages can not only make the products have a longer shelf life, but also preserve the nutrition and flavor in the beverages to the greatest extent. Milk or juice drinks are firstly sterilized by UHT sterilizer, then cooled to room temperature and filled into aseptic containers. Beverages processed in this way will not be damaged by over-heating. Aseptic beverages do not need to add any additives, it can be good quality and have a long shelf life at ambient temperature.

There are 3 kinds of aseptic filling machine basically with the following types:

—TETRA PAK Carton aseptic filling and packaging equipment.

—PET bottle Aseptic filling and packaging equipment.

—Aseptic bag filling equipment.

Aseptic packaging technology basically includes the following features:

• The liquid materials, packaging materials and filling environment are kept sterile.
• The filling temperature is 30-40℃. The finished product storage temperature is in room temperature.
• The liquid materials do not need to add any additives to extend the shelf life of the product.
• Before filling, the material needs to be heat-treated for a short time at high temperature.
• Aseptic filled liquid materials can keep original nutrition, flavor and longer shelf life.

Tetra Pak Aseptic Filler is very popular for filling UHT milk, NFC juice, coconut milk and some other liquid materials. Liquid materials must be filled under sterile conditions to ensure that the quality of the materials after UHT treatment is not polluted. The liquid materials will be transported to the aseptic filling machine in a closed environment and pre-sterilized system, and then metered and filled into the packaging box under aseptic conditions. The packaging box is also automatically formed and sterilized in the machine.

The packaging material is a composite layer material made of paper, aluminum foil and PE material, it can form a barrier layer to prevent recontamination, and also prevent the intrusion of light and oxygen, so that the liquid material filled into carton box will not deteriorate. The packaging materials surface needs to be sterilized with H2O2 before forms a carton box. All filling machine parts that are directly or indirectly in contact with sterile liquid materials should be sterilized with H202, and then dried with sterile hot air. After the material is sterilized by UHT, it is transported to the aseptic chamber of the filling machine through the aseptic pipeline to complete the filling process. The entire filling process is carried out under completely closed conditions to ensure that the sterile liquid materials will not be secondarily contaminated.

The aseptic packaging system uses PET bottle preforms as raw materials and uses high-temperature bottle blowing technology to make containers. In an aseptic environment, the liquid materials are filled in PET bottles. The equipment can fill various foods and beverages, such as UHT milk, NFC juice, vegetable protein drinks, etc.

The whole aseptic bottle filling system includes the main filling equipment (sterile water and disinfectant bottle flushing process, filling process(aseptic filling valve), capping process, cap disinfection and PLC control system) and auxiliary filling equipment (including CIP, COP, SOP and COP systems).

To produce sterile liquid products, the following three conditions also need to be met: use H2O2 to sterilize the bottles and caps; use 100 level clean air purification room and chemical disinfectants (steam) to sterilize the filling machine; Aseptic processing of liquid materials with UHT sterilizer.

Aseptic bags filler is suitable for filling fruit and vegetable concentrated juice/puree/paste (concentrated tomato paste, concentrated citrus juice, concentrated or non-concentrated mango pulp, etc) into 5kg/220kg/1000kg aseptic bags.

The 220kg flexible aseptic packaging bags are composed of aluminum, EVOH, pure aluminum foil and other composite materials. It has the characteristics of high heat sealing strength, good airtightness, folding resistance and pressure resistance. The filler will have SIP(steam and H202 sterilizing process to filling chamber) and CIP cleaning process before the production process to ensure the filling machine is aseptic. Then the liquid materials proceed by UHT sterilizer will be transferred to the aseptic filling chamber and filled into aseptic bags.