CIP (Clean-in-Place) Buying Guide

In addition to maintaining hygienic standards essential to processing, CIP is key to operational safety.

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Increased Product Safety

• CIP minimizes mistakes by automating cleaning to reduce chances of human error that can contribute to an unsafe product.
• CIP decreases contamination risks with monitoring sensors.
  

Increased Employee Safety

• A fully automated CIP system increases employee safety by minimizing exposure to aggressive cleaning chemicals associated with CIP.
• No Vessel Entry (confined space) – With a properly designed CIP system and tank spray devices, operators will not be required to obtain special confined space permits to enter tanks for cleaning. Not only does this increase employee safety, but it also decreases facility liability.
  

The Bottom Line

The objective for most process environments is to maximize quality production time and minimize other activities and costs. The bigger and more difficult the cleaning job and the more frequent the cleaning cycle, the more cost-effective CIP can be.

Here are some of the main economic benefits of installing a CIP system:

• More Production Time – As less production time is lost to cleaning, more time is spent making product.
• Product Quality – Reliable and repeatable cleaning leads to sustainable product quality and consistency. Less contamination means fewer product recalls and higher brand confidence.
• Employee Efficiency – More labor time is spent on productive, profitable activities.
  

ADVANTAGES OF CIP

• Utility Savings – Water and energy usage is reduced through repeatable cycle control.
• Lower Water Treatment Costs – The amount of effluent going to drain is greatly reduced.
• Lower maintenance costs – Properly cleaned equipment will potentially run longer between maintenance periods, which translates to more time producing product.
  

Rules & Regulations

No government rules or regulations currently mandate that components of a process system be cleaned in place, only that they be sufficiently cleaned. To properly apply CIP strategies to a processing plant, the process system components themselves should conform to hygienic design criteria ensuring that they are cleanable. These design criteria are well established and documented:

• The 3-A Sanitary Standards (U.S.A.)
• The European Hygienic Design and Engineering Group (EHEDGE)
• The European Standard EN 1672-2 (2005)

As the concern for public safety of food and pharmaceutical products increases, cleaning in place offers clear advantages to helping processors maintain the necessary level of hygiene. Here are a few standards that guide the design and use of CIP systems:

Food Safety Modernization Act

Signed into law in 2011, the FSMA granted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) new authority to regulate how food is grown and processed. A major emphasis of the FSMA is the focus on prevention of practices that can lead to foodborne illnesses.

Cleaning in place is a valuable tool when it comes to food safety; therefore, a quality CIP system should provide all of the necessary functionality needed to maintain the standards set forth in the FSMA.

CFR21

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is a set of rules published by the U.S. government. Title 21 of the CFR (CFR21) is used by the Food and Drug Administration to establish requirements for the manufacture of food industry products and pharmaceuticals, including how equipment should be cleaned and maintained. A top-quality, well-designed CIP system should adhere to these guidelines and should comply with CFR21.

S88

In recent years a set of standards known officially as ANSI/ISA-88 was developed to address batch process control procedures and provide standard organization for how systems communicate and work together. A CIP system that complies with S88 would have an advantage when it comes to integrating into a process system.

Cleaning Then And Now

Until about the 1950s, cleaning the product contact surfaces of process systems was done manually, requiring all piping, vessels, and equipment be disconnected, washed by hand, and then reassembled before the next production run. Every section of piping was either placed in a COP (clean-out-of-place) tank for washing or hand scrubbed. Likewise, every pump and valve had to be completely disassembled, cleaned by hand, and then reassembled. This expensive, time-consuming process had to be repeated as frequently as necessary to maintain a safe, hygienic process system and avoid product cross-contamination.

Since then, Clean-In-Place (CIP) strategies have advanced to be a reliable way of cleaning process equipment and piping without dismantling the system. CIP is an efficient, fully automated process with multiple dedicated tanks, programmable logic controllers, highly accurate sensors, spray devices, heat exchangers, and automatic valves.

As processors embraced the CIP concept and became more knowledgeable about clean-in-place strategies, the manufacturers of processing equipment took note and started to re-engineer their product lines to make them suitable for cleaning in place. Over the years, equipment manufacturers and process industry experts have worked together to drive improvements in equipment and components to make cleaning more effective. There are still plenty of non-CIP-able pumps, valves, and fittings available in the marketplace, but today’s process engineers have little trouble finding process system components that are compatible with CIP.

As an extension of CIP, Sterilization in Place or Steam in Place (SIP) adds a sterilization step at the end of the CIP process. SIP kills microorganisms still active in the system with hot water or steam (> 121 C).

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