Industry sector: Production of liquid plant-based solutions
Company activity: Distillation and production of essential oils and floral waters from fresh plants
Company type: SME
Founded: 1990–2000
Contact: Company Maintenance Manager
Company context
The filtration system used must ensure the production of plant-based solutions free from any bacterial contamination.
Filtration challenge
The filtration system previously used by the company for essential oil filtration proved ineffective for floral water production.
Bacterial contamination was detected, which led the client to implement a filtration chain ensuring sterilisation prior to packaging.
Pemflow filtration solution
The filtration system previously used by the company for essential oil filtration proved ineffective for floral water production, as bacterial contamination was detected. The client therefore sought to implement a filtration chain ensuring sterilisation prior to packaging.
We recommended the use of a bacteriological-grade final filtration cartridge with a 0.2 µm threshold to obtain a sterile solution before bottling.
Given the high impurity content of floral waters (fragments of branches, leaves and petals), four filtration stages were implemented to prevent clogging of the final filter.
To maintain the packaging flow rate and thus preserve productivity, the following 20-inch filtration cartridges were selected:
- One 30 µm nominal-rated cartridge in a PP filter housing
- One 20 µm nominal-rated cartridge in a PP filter housing
- One 3 µm absolute-rated cartridge ensuring retention of the last contaminant particles, in a PP filter housing
- One 0.2 µm PES membrane cartridge, biological grade, to guarantee sterility of the final solution, in a 316L stainless steel housing. This system is equipped with a sight glass for visual filtration monitoring and an isolation mechanism for integrity testing of the sterilising cartridge.
A similar filtration configuration — this time using 5-inch cartridges — was also selected by the client for smaller batch packaging.
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