Water Chillers for Food Beverage Liquid Filling

It is not necessary to filter the water, but you may want to treat the water with an anti-rust additive. The water in your 10 ton chiller should be a loop, not just running tap water through a chiller and then to the heat exchanger.

It may not be necessary to filter the city water but it can not hurt. Repairs and maintenance to the lines by city workers some times allow debris in to the system that could get it to the chiller. Small stones and pebbles may clog exchanger tubes. Better to be safe than sorry. A filter on the intake of the pump will keep it from drawing in any debris that mite cause damage to the pump. If in a closed system a Y strainer at the pump would catch scale from the inside of the pipe. Excessive scale would indicator of a water problem so that you can treat the water before it damages the system.

I would filter the water if a cooling tower is being used. These cooling towers are no more than a huge vaccume, pulling in any dust, silica, trash that can be carried by wind. I have pulled a plastic shopping bag from a chiller end bell before, needless to say there was not a filter in the loop.

There are many alternate filtering methods.

1).Centrifigul cyclone, that removes large particals by weight.

2).Swimming Pool system puumbed in as side strean with pleated polyester 10 micron cartridges. Reccomend 3oo cu.in. size w/1 1/2 hp pump.

3). Sand filtration installed as #2 with backwash feature for cleaning. Sand or DE filters can channell after time, lets large particals pass thru.

For my dollar & choose would and do use #2 option. Pressure gauge on top of filter housing will alert you, at 15 psi rise to clean the cartridges. Use ball valves for cut off to clean filters. Spray off the pleates and then dip in 50/50 water & acid magic solution to remove minerals. replace cartridge, open valves, turn on pump.

To respond to the comment "adding of a the corrosion inhibitor" when processing food all media in contact with a common wall such as a heat exchanger must be non toxic. If the chiller has sufficient cooling capacity a propylene glycol solution with an approved inhibitor works well. Materials in the processing of food should be CIP (clean in place) stainless steel. A double wall vented heat exchanger prevents any potential for co-mingling of processes.

It depends what is quality of city water. Is it suitable for drinking? then it must be clean water and no need for filteration. If it is meant for industrial use then may be required to filter. Also if water is hard then it may need treatment as it may cause corrossion to equipment.

Samuel, In food & Beverage Industry Analysis of water is always the reference point if contamination is concern. This will also determine the Suspended Solids in water (scale) which will affect the equipment such HE / Condensers that lessen the heat transfer. i recommend you to sit & discuss this issues with your QA/QC personnel for knowing the water quality requirements.

In most dairy plant, they RO plant to convert / process the deepwell water / raw water coming from outside.

The company also can obtain water analysis if the water is supplied by the municipality source.

Regards

Jojie_oak

For most food processing operations using city water it is unnecessary to filter the water, but it would be advisable to provide an appropriate "non-toxic" rust inhibitor and UV treat the water in the event there is any inadvertent contact of the water with the foodstuffs.

<plate-n-plate heat exchanger>

So NO touching between Juices and the heat-carrier i.e. WATER.

If the plate-n-plate is SS-- no rust-no buildup- nothing to filter.

If it is Copper alloy Plate-n plate,-the same.

Still psychologically-you cannot go wrong if you build in a low resistance IN-LINE mesh-cum-coarse-sand filter.

If your company is using city water, it is understood that the water specification meets drinking water criteria. Two cooling systems can be designed: 1) Open loop: In this system the inffluent city water never return to the Plant, therefore a filtration unit is not necessary. 2) Closed loop: City water is recycled and pumped back to the chillers. In this process, contamination is possible if the storage container is an open tank, then a filtration system is necessary as well as a quality control, to determine quality of water. Analysis for TSS, pH, hardness is recommendable to determine when water can be replaced. This option is recommendable to save water and not waste it.