Bottle cleaning machinery

[Rob Creighton]

Steve,

Remember the material your dealing with. Glass is inert but has a very rough surface under a microscope that can entrap chemicals.

Cautic bloom is a surface white film from prolonged exposure to NAOH that you cannot remove, even with acid. You must destroy the bottle.

A standard bottle washer to remove dirt and paper labels initially hits the interior of the bottle with hot water internally to wash out straws, condoms, etc... and loosen dirt (your presoak). I would be very careful about what "detergents" you put near the glass. Bottlewashing additives are typically chelating surfactants designed to help lift the dirt and yet come off during rinsing.

The second bottlewasher stage is a series of sprays and submergings in 170-180 F (76-82 C) degree 2-3% chlorinated NAOH solutions that usually contains additives. This may not be an issue if you are not dealing with paper labels. The issue here is using heat, chemical energy and mechanical energy to come up with a commercially clean bottle. Acid solutions are not used in commercial bottlewashers that I am aware of.

I have a system using a hot water soak (label and dirt soak removal) followed by a 3 minute interior wash using a bottlerack above a heated tank, followed by a hotwater rinse and visual inspection. It is very effective but I am not asking 4000 bottles/shift out of it. I guess my point is be very careful about putting a variety of detergents/chemicals anywhere near glass that is to be sold back to the public

[fullmoonwinery]

hi, just an update. we have been cleaning with detergent soak, 24hrs, scrub inside with bottle brush on a battery drill, 1 hours soak in caustic and room temp (30degC), 15 min soak in fairly concentrated chlorinated water. then final chlorine and then KMS rinse in bottling machine.

as far as i can tell, they are coming out clean and i assume sanitized

however, we had 3 out of about 3000 explode on the filling machine. it seems repeated use weakens the glass. and we don't want them breaking in delivery or in the bars so we are abandoning recycled bottles.

[PanConsulting]

I have over 20 years experience in bottle washing. The majority of it was in high speed. I’ve been involved in everything from manual inspection to automated EBI inspection units. I would not rely on manual inspections too much if you can help it. People tend to daydream, fall asleep, etc and then you end up missing the foreign objects. Even high tech equipment is not 100% reliable. You almost need to put in two inline machines. One may catch 95% and with two you may catch 99% of the foreign matter, and that is if the machines are properly calibrated. We were producing Beer for Canada and imported their used returnable bottles, rewashed them, filled and returned the products to Canada. For some reason we were getting many empty clear crack cocaine bags shoved inside the bottles. Some of them came out in the soaker, but many did not. They ended up sticking to the sidewalls of the bottles. They were so hard to detect even the EBI’s had problems. You need a unit with a sidewall detector to try and find these bags. Once the bottles were filled the bags would float off the sides of the bottles and we were able to find them most of them.

There are many other issues with returnable bottles that I could talk about. I don’t know what condition your float of bottles may be or the area that you will be selling them in. But one lawsuit due to a customer swallowing something will not be a good thing. Therefore if you are going to do this…. don’t take shortcuts. If I were you I would run away very fast.

[DanLeCastor]

Outsource bottle washing instead?

Rob - you've done a great job scaring me away from any type of bottle washing. Would you outsource the job if you had a fairly local company offering the service?
cheers,

Steve,

Remember the material your dealing with. Glass is inert but has a very rough surface under a microscope that can entrap chemicals.

Cautic bloom is a surface white film from prolonged exposure to NAOH that you cannot remove, even with acid. You must destroy the bottle.

A standard bottle washer to remove dirt and paper labels initially hits the interior of the bottle with hot water internally to wash out straws, condoms, etc... and loosen dirt (your presoak). I would be very careful about what "detergents" you put near the glass. Bottlewashing additives are typically chelating surfactants designed to help lift the dirt and yet come off during rinsing.

The second bottlewasher stage is a series of sprays and submergings in 170-180 F (76-82 C) degree 2-3% chlorinated NAOH solutions that usually contains additives. This may not be an issue if you are not dealing with paper labels. The issue here is using heat, chemical energy and mechanical energy to come up with a commercially clean bottle. Acid solutions are not used in commercial bottlewashers that I am aware of.

I have a system using a hot water soak (label and dirt soak removal) followed by a 3 minute interior wash using a bottlerack above a heated tank, followed by a hotwater rinse and visual inspection. It is very effective but I am not asking 4000 bottles/shift out of it. I guess my point is be very careful about putting a variety of detergents/chemicals anywhere near glass that is to be sold back to the public

[Rob Creighton]

Dan, It wasn't my intention to scare anyone away from bottlewashing but rather, the opposite. I can see a movement in the craft industry to include bottlewashing on lines running 25 to 120 bpm. It is perceived as 'green'.

Glass is a big expense for a small brewery. The bottle we put our beer in must be clean & not able to affect the product microbiologically. If we are going to wash glass it must be done in a cost effective and reliable fashion and it must have a small machine footprint.

If you are going to contract wash with an outside company, you want some method of guaranteeing the glass you are receiving is clean - micro, damaged glass, contract shrinkage.

I have talked to a Barry Wehmiller rep about small washers and I'm talking to the Chinese company about their machine. We may not be that far away.

[einhorn]

I'd love to hear how things are going for Natrat. Update?

[DanLeCastor]

Rob,
We're starting very small, so my initial plan was to buy a semi-auto bottle washer with a 30 bottle capacity - it's all we could afford initially, and volumes will be low. We have to wash our glass in Quebec - no choice. We're using a bottle format that Labatt/Molson will not pick up & wash, so the washing falls on our plate. The bottle washing contractor (who is excellent - United Bottles in Laval) will only take a full truck load. In your opinion, would we be better off just buying new glass until we can fill a truck load, rather than trying to do it ourselves in such small, labour intensive volumes?
thanks for any insight,
dan

Dan, It wasn't my intention to scare anyone away from bottlewashing but rather, the opposite. I can see a movement in the craft industry to include bottlewashing on lines running 25 to 120 bpm. It is perceived as 'green'.

Glass is a big expense for a small brewery. The bottle we put our beer in must be clean & not able to affect the product microbiologically. If we are going to wash glass it must be done in a cost effective and reliable fashion and it must have a small machine footprint.

If you are going to contract wash with an outside company, you want some method of guaranteeing the glass you are receiving is clean - micro, damaged glass, contract shrinkage.

I have talked to a Barry Wehmiller rep about small washers and I'm talking to the Chinese company about their machine. We may not be that far away.