For consumers and authorities, maximum safety and quality in the production of food is essential. To ensure the highest standards of hygiene, food manufacturers and processors are required to regularly clean their machines by washing them down. To ensure that vacuum pumps are effectively protected from the aggressive cleaning media used, Leybold has developed a new range of hygienic housings. The vacuum specialist offers users the stainless steel housings in seven different, customized sizes for vacuum pumps.
In the food industry, vacuum pumps are often placed directly next to the processing and packaging lines and are therefore not implemented in the systems. On the one hand, this leads to a higher vacuum performance, as losses in pumping speed over longer pipelines are avoided. A direct positive consequence of this is shorter process cycles and better product quality. On the other hand, unprotected pumps are directly exposed to aggressive cleaning media during rinsing processes. Over time, this leads to corroded vacuum pumps, shorter life cycles, higher costs and ultimately even food contamination.
To counteract these risks, Leybold has developed a new protection concept with the hygienic stainless steel housings, which allow the vacuum pumps to be positioned close to machines and systems without any problems. "Based on the protected Leybold vacuum pumps, we can create better and more robust solutions for demanding food applications," emphasizes the responsible product manager Niels Gorrebeeck. "Of course, this applies all the more to applications such as filling or tumbling processes and, of course, packaging machines, where the machines and systems have to be cleaned and disinfected particularly frequently and intensively," explains the product manager.
According to Gorrebeeck, these stainless steel housings are tailor-made for various vacuum pumps. This means that encapsulated pumps can run constantly at all working pressures. The only restriction is the maximum ambient temperature for the housing. Nevertheless, the normal working temperature in food and packaging applications is around 10 °C; most housings have been qualified up to 25 °C. In addition, all housings are available as do-it-yourself kits and can be installed and commissioned by the user with little effort.
