What Filtration Steps Should We Pay Attention to In Beverage Industry?

With the increasing demands of consumers and legislative authorities to continuously improve the level of safety and quality control, the food and beverage industry is facing huge challenges. No matter what kind of beverage you produce: wine, beer, water, mineral water, soft drinks, juice, soda or any other beverage, filtration is a key step in its production.

Appropriate filtration systems are essential to ensure the biological safety, quality and shelf life of products, and to protect process equipment. So what filtration steps should we pay attention to during beverage production?

1. Pre-Filtration Stage

The pre-filtration stage is mainly to remove unwanted large particles, the filter material is usually visible to the naked eye. For example, when making soda water, some of the raw materials used may contain particles that can affect the quality and appearance of the final product. The bag filter housing with filter bag and depth filter element provided by Hongtek, such as Melt Blown Cartridges, String Wound Filters can be used in this step.

2. Fine Filtration Stage

According to the beverage composition (solid content, turbidity, microorganisms), a Pleated Filter Elements with a filtration accuracy of 1 to 3 micron is usually selected. Polypropylene and glass fiber pleated filter elements have advantages of low pressure drop, high load capacity and efficiency. Due to the inherent positive charge of the medium, the glass fiber pleated filter element also helps to remove smog.

3. Sterile Filtration Stage

Before bottling, a final filtration step clarifies the beverage while removing residual yeast and microbial contaminants. Potential sources of infection such as cryptosporidium, giardia lamblia, diatomaceous earth, and diatom powder are the targets to be eliminated because they may cause bottled fermentation, haze reformation, and interfere with the preservation of beverages. For the removal of microbial contaminants, Hongtek PES Membrane Pleated Filters with 0.45 or 0.2 micron can be used.

In addition to these three main filtration steps, it is also important to comply with beverage quality and regulations. With the continuous improvement of industry thresholds, beverage production technology and product quality requirements are becoming more and more stringent. As a supplier of well-known brand filtration products at home and abroad, Hongtek provides optimized filtration solutions and products for different beverage product manufacturers to reduce production and operation costs while improving product quality.