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Food
Processing Equipment Failures
Food
processing is a large segment of manufacturing sector.
Some of the major concerns of the
food processing industry are food product quality, health, and sanitation
issues. High levels of process
control must be maintained. Equipment
failure or corrosion deposits that might be tolerated in other industries are
unacceptable in the food industry. Product quality is the primary concern in food processing plants. Equipment reliability and identifying the root cause of equipment failures are significant issues to the food processing industry. Some common causes of equipment failure are listed below:
Food
processing equipment is commonly made of corrosion resistant materials such as
stainless steels. When coatings
are used in food processing plants, the coatings must be capable of withstanding
high pressure cleaning, microbial attack, and antimicrobial additives used to
control bacterial formation. Some
food processing plants prefer urethane coatings over epoxy coatings as they find
they have greater resistance to cleaning compounds. The
corrosion environment in food and beverage plants includes moderate to high
concentrations of chlorides. Chlorides
are frequently mixed with significant concentrations of organic acids. Water
processing equipment in plants can vary from steam heating to brine cooling. Sulfating
agents which can produce sulfur dioxide when used to treat foods include sodium
sulfite, sodium bisulfite, sodium metabisulfite, potassium bisulfite, and
potassium metabisulfite. These sulfating
agents are usually corrosive to food processing plant equipment Some
commonly encountered corrosion issues in food and beverage processing plants are
listed below:
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