The centre piece of the fruit juice pasteurizer is the VARITUBE® tubular heat exchanger.
It features direct heat recovery, without intermediate circuit, for the fruit juice and primary industry, developed in the Fruit Juice Competence Centre at GEA TDS in Sarstedt.
The VARITUBE® SK is equipped with a patented special flow device that processes highly viscous products and products containing fibres. Product treatment takes place both in the inner tube and on the shell side. The key user benefits are low investment costs and
a high heat recovery rate of up to 92 %.
Process sequence:
The product is conveyed from the mixing station to the VARITUBE
® tubular heat exchanger via a closed supply tank. The product is heated by direct heat ex-change in the heat recovery section of the tubular heat exchanger. The pasteurized prod-uct is the transferred via a sterile buffer tank to the PET filler – an optional degassing unit can be interconnected.
The fruit juice pasteurizer can be operated variably at between 50% and 100% of its ca-pacity to accommodate different bottle sizes.
The water UHT plant generates sterile water for the filling block for cleaning, disinfecting, flushing, rinsing and sterilising. The water is sterilised in a GEA plate heat exchanger at 140 °C and intermediately stored in a sterile buffer tank. This ensures that a sufficient amount of sterile water will always be available for the filling block irrespective of the cur-rent consumption.
A CIP system is integrated into the water UHT plant for cleaning the plant itself and the filling block. GEA Tuchenhagen VARIVENT
® mixproof valves with va-pour barrier (pressure hammer resistant) are used in the entire aseptic area of the process plant.