Prevention and control measures of food processing machinery being contaminated in production

There are many factors that affect the quality of food production and processing. The most important factor is the variety of pollution. How to solve the pollution problem is an important aspect of ensuring food quality. Mr. Zhou Li, general manager of Shanghai Kangjiu Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd., who specializes in research and development of food sterilization technology and equipment manufacturing, believes that the secondary pollution of food processing machinery to food is extremely serious. Prevention and control of food processing machinery is an important measure to protect food hygiene and safety. one.

1. Factors affecting the quality of food The quality of food is related to the physical and mental safety of the people. To produce high-quality, qualified food, it must have three elements: (1) Qualified personnel; (2) Software that conforms to GMP operating specifications, such as reasonable Process recipes and work flow, qualified raw and auxiliary materials, specifications and management systems, etc.; (3) QS sanitary production hardware, including qualified production environment and production conditions, and plant and equipment that meet the requirements.

2. The prevention and control implications of food equipment in the production of pollution From the above we can see that the production environment and production conditions and equipment are one aspect affecting the quality of food. In food production, the pollution of production environment and production conditions generally includes microorganisms, dust, particles, corrosion, errors, and cross-contamination. The food processing machinery's prevention and control of pollution in production includes two meanings. The first processing machine itself does not cause pollution to the food, nor does it cause pollution to the environment; the second should have effective means of controlling pollution. To this end, GMP has made a number of guidelines for processing machinery that directly participates in food production. The basic point is to ensure the quality of food, prevent various pollutions that may be caused to the food during the production process, and may affect the environment and human health. Hazard and other factors. Therefore, the design of food processing machinery must comply with GMP requirements, reduce pollution factors, and have good control of pollution. Although the state does not implement mandatory GMP certification requirements for food companies, food machinery manufacturing companies should be able to prevent or control pollution of food equipment. Shanghai Kangjiu Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd. as early as in 2008, this concept is used to disinfect equipment. Design and manufacturing.

3. The design of food processing machinery meets the requirements of GMP. Food processing equipment should learn the indicators of product design, manufacturing, technology, performance, etc. of the cooking equipment under the specific conditions of GMP. The general rules of equipment GMP design should be taken as the guideline. The establishment and improvement of the GMP standard for food equipment is as follows:

(1) The design of the equipment should meet the requirements of food production and process, be safe, stable, reliable, easy to clean, disinfect or sterilize, facilitate production operation and maintenance, and prevent errors and cross-contamination;

(2) Strictly control the material selection of the equipment. Components that are in direct contact with semi-finished or finished food products shall be made of materials that are non-toxic, non-corrosive, chemically non-reactive with foods, and do not release particles or absorb foods;

(3) As far as possible, the inner surface of the equipment and the surface of the working parts that are in direct contact with the food should not be designed with tables, grooves, and exposed bolt connections as much as possible. The surface should be smooth, smooth, no dead ends, easy to clean and disinfect;

(4) The equipment should not cause pollution to the environment outside the device. In view of the different situations of pollution produced by each type of equipment, relevant measures such as dust prevention, leakage prevention, heat insulation, and noise prevention should be taken.

(5) The equipment used in flammable and explosive environments shall be explosion-proof electrical appliances and equipped with static elimination and safety insurance devices;

(6) The equipment for filling or dispensing high-protein beverages shall be operated in a corresponding clean room, with local use of 1000-level laminar clean air and positive pressure protection;

(7) The design of beverages, purified water and purified compressed air pipelines should avoid dead ends and blind pipes. The material should be non-toxic and resistant to corrosion. The inner surface should be electropolished and easy to clean;

(8) When a trace amount of foreign matter generated by friction is driven or lubricants cannot be avoided, the parts should be closed and isolated from the working chamber. The lubricant used must not cause contamination to food, packaging containers, etc.;

(9) Cleaning of sterile equipment, especially the sterilization of the parts and components that are in direct contact with the food, should be marked with the date of sterilization and verified if necessary. Equipment cleaning is best equipped with CIP and SIP systems;

(10) Equipment design should meet the requirements of standardization, generalization, serialization and electromechanical integration. The continuous sealing and automatic detection of the production process is a guarantee for the full implementation of the equipment GMP.

4. The prevention and control measures of food processing equipment on the pollution in production The complexity of food processing technology determines the diversity of equipment functions, and the advantages and disadvantages of food equipment are reflected in the ability to meet the requirements of use, in line with GMP and against environmental pollution. Control. In food production, processing equipment is a key means of ensuring food quality. GMP's requirements for equipment are mainly aimed at reducing food contamination in the production process and achieving the purpose of ensuring food quality requirements. Food equipment can be selected in functions, appearance structures, and materials. , equipment verification on the prevention and control of pollution.

4.1. Functional aspects 4.1.1. Purification function Hygienic cleanliness is one of the key points of GMP. To achieve this standard, it is necessary to have food cleanliness in the area where the food is exposed, and the cleanliness of the room cannot meet the requirements or the man-machine pollution may be possible. In principle, the purification function should be designed. If it is economically unacceptable to the construction cost or operating cost of the clean room, it can directly purchase the “Food Dynamic Disinfection Machine”, which is a more economical air disinfection and purification method. This functional form of different equipment requirements is also not the same. As follows:

(1) Equipment that uses gas in the process, especially gas and food or equipment that comes into direct contact with food packaging materials, must be sterilized by terminal filtration, such as compressed air from blister packaging machines;

(2) Washing bottles or other food packaging material cleaning equipment shall take into account the cleanliness of the process water, and generally use water that has been disinfected with tap water or purified water, such as washing machines, rubber stoppers, and other equipment;

(3) Equipment for generating dust during production shall be provided with a dust collector or a dust-catching mechanism such as a crusher, a granulator, and a tablet press;

(4) In a clean room or a controlled place where food dynamic sterilizers are installed, purification of the air-conditioner or ventilation system to purify each function and maintain a relative pressure difference can prevent dust diffusion and prevent cross-contamination.

4.1.2 Isolation function According to QS requirements, the food production process should try to avoid the contamination of microorganisms or other pollutants. Segregation is a good method. Due to the complex food production process and environment, there are many influencing factors in the process of ingredients, manufacturing, cooling, filling, and packaging. Therefore, the design of food processing equipment must be realized to achieve the confinement of the production process and the isolation technology.

The isolation technology of the food industry involves beverages, baking, snack foods and other industries that have strict requirements on shelf life. Therefore, in the production, such as the beverage processing industry, in order to avoid contamination, it is necessary to design and establish a separation zone around the processing equipment in the production process. Personnel segregation Outside the filling area, thorough isolation techniques and automatic control systems are adopted to minimize the impact of the operators on the environment, and at the same time, the risk of microbial contamination of products in the aseptic production environment can be greatly reduced.

4.1.3 Cleaning and Sterilization Functions in Place 4.1.3.1 Cleaning in Place (CIP)

In food production, cleaning and sterilizing equipment are the primary means of repelling microbial contamination. CIP is a complete set of technical systems that includes equipment, piping, operating procedures, cleaning agent formulations, automatic control and monitoring requirements. It can use the controlled circulation of cleaning fluid to clean the dirt without disassembling or moving the equipment and piping as much as possible. GMP clearly stipulates that food preparation equipment should be easy to clean, especially when replacing products. All equipment, pipes, and containers must be thoroughly cleaned and sterilized as required to eliminate active ingredients and their derivatives, excipients, detergents, and lubricants. Cross-contamination of environmental pollutants, removal of foreign matter in flushing water and foreign matter and insoluble particles released during the operation of equipment, reducing or eliminating the contamination of microorganisms and pyrogens on food.

4.1.3.2, Sterilization in Place (SIP)

SIP is another important aspect of GMP compliance for food processing machinery. The systems that can adopt SIP are mainly pipeline conveying lines, preparation kettles, filtration systems, filling systems, and water treatment systems in the food production process. SIP requires little disassembly and assembly operations and is easy to automate, thereby reducing pollution and other adverse effects caused by personnel.

Other sterilization methods are also worthy of attention. Such as: (1) The plasma diffuse disinfection machine equipped with an air conditioning system sterilizes the air in the clean area and can kill a variety of pathogenic microorganisms. It has a wide spread, no dead spots, no toxic residue, no two Sub-pollution, with good environmental protection; (2) NCL-Q8 auto-sensing hand sterilizer for practitioners' hands, because the hand disinfection before work is not thorough or is not repeated during work, except for secondary pollution food , And will contaminate the food processing machinery, and finally stacking cross-contaminated foods, leading to food failure; (3) Purification equipment should be set up at the export of purified water, to ensure the quality of purified water exports; (4) buffer chamber installed food dynamic disinfection machine To prevent secondary contamination of bacteria in the air by tools, materials, and packaging materials entering the clean area.

4.1.4 Online monitoring and control function The online monitoring and control function mainly refers to the equipment having the functions of analyzing and processing the system and can automatically complete several steps or processes. This is also the premise of connection, linkage operation and control. GMP requires that the production of food should be continuous and that the process transfer time is the shortest, which can reduce the contact time between humans and food and shorten the exposure time of food. This should be an important guiding ideology in equipment design and equipment transformation. The production practice proves that the joint motivation group or production line can organically connect the front and back process equipment into a pipeline, which effectively overcomes the cross-contamination caused by multiple sequencing.

4.1.5. The essence of the safety protection function is to ensure food quality and personal safety. The following points can be considered:

(1) Explosion-proof appliances shall be used for equipment used in flammable and explosive environments, and shall be provided with safety alarm devices and safety insurance devices. Such as combustible gas alarms;

(2) Some need to consider protection under extreme conditions, such as "emergency brakes" for high-speed equipment, "safety valves" for high-voltage equipment, etc.

(3) Protection functions in liquid processing equipment, such as no bottle stop irrigation, automatic disposal, stuck parking, foreign material rejection, etc., application of instruments, meters, computer technology to achieve early warning, display, processing, etc. And rely on the experience of the operation, can reduce waste, improve the equipment's automatic operation, automatic protection.

4.2 Appearance and structure The use of food equipment involves variety, batch change, and frequent, in order to avoid cross-contamination of materials and components to react, remove the dust inside and outside the equipment, cleaning adhesives and other operations and inspections are essential, and The requirements are extremely strict. GMP requires that the equipment is clean and tidy in order to achieve easy and thorough cleaning.

(1) Emphasizes the simplification of the overall structure and shape, which is in terms of the device as a whole and the parts that must be exposed (including some directly visible parts). The simplification of the physics from the viewpoint of GMP makes it possible to make the irregularities, grooves, and tables in the conventional design of the equipment simple and concise, which can minimize the dust and accumulated dirt and make it easy to clean;

(2) For institutions that are not directly related to production operations, the built-in and built-in systems should be designed as much as possible. If the transmission and other parts are designed as built-in type;

(3) Components that come in contact with food should have a low surface roughness value that does not adhere to the material. Polishing is an effective process. The polished objects are mainly stainless steel plates, castings, weldments, etc., and the external contour of the polishing should be concise and polished in place.

(4) The coated structure is the most common and simple means of food equipment. Enclose the complex body, body, pipeline, and device with a plate to achieve simplicity;

(5) Lubrication is essential for mechanical movement. A considerable part of the cooking equipment is a tabletop exercise. The moving and moving axes of moving rods are complex and structurally complex. They are all related to food production, and the equipment has specific requirements for cleaning. In any case, lubricants and cleaning agents must not come into contact with food, including the possibility of falling into, infiltrating, etc. There are two types of solutions: one is the use of barriers to food; the other is the barrier to lubrication, to ensure that the oil and washing water in lubrication and cleaning are not in contact with food ingredients, intermediates, and food ingredients.

4.3 Material GMP The material of manufacturing equipment cannot affect the nature, purity and quality of foods. The materials used must have safety, discernibility and strength of use. Therefore, when selecting materials, equipment and food should be considered in contact with media, or in corrosive and odorous environments, no reaction, no release of particles, not easy to absorb or absorb moisture, etc., to reduce the run, run, leak, and drop in production. To reduce the occurrence of safety accidents such as fires and explosions and to reduce pollution to the environment and food. Both metal and non-metal materials should have these properties.

4.3.1 Metallic materials Wherever contact with food or corrosive media and equipment in wet environments, low carbon content austenitic stainless steel, titanium and titanium composites shall be used to provide corrosion resistance to iron-based coatings. Materials such as coatings, heat-resisting, and wear-resistant coatings should be manufactured with care. Non-above-mentioned parts can use other metal materials, in principle, parts made of these materials should be surface treated. Second, it is important to note the consistency of the materials used in the same part (part). Stainless steel fittings should not be used with ordinary bolts.

4.3.2 Non-metallic materials Commonly used non-metallic materials in food equipment, the principle of the selection of such materials is non-toxic, non-polluting, that is, should not be loose or easy to drop slag, hair loss. Special applications should also consider the properties of the materials used: heat, oil, non-adsorption, non-hygroscopic, etc. Sealed packing and filter material should pay attention to the requirements of hygienic performance.

4.3.3 Hazards of Corrosion of Materials The simplest example is the oxidation of the cans used to package canned goods, the oxidation of metal and oxygen in the atmosphere, and the formation of oxides due to oxidation of metals. , And lose the original characteristics, making the food contaminated, corrosion can be broadly divided into dry and waterless wet etching. Most of the dry etching is chemical corrosion of metals such as oxidation, vulcanization, and nitridation at high temperatures; and wet etching is the chemical reaction of metals at room temperature with water or other electrolytes due to the transfer of electrons and can be regarded as an electricity. Chemical reaction, which is the corrosion process of most metals. More than metal materials are subject to environmental influences that cause corrosion. Non-metallic materials such as plastics and ceramics are also subject to deterioration due to environmental factors. There may not be changes in appearance and weight, such as metal corrosion, but only changes in properties. People are alert to severe corrosion, but mild corrosion, in some cases, can also cause serious problems that cannot be ignored.

4.4. Equipment Verification GMP always regards food production verification as an important part. Regardless of the verification, the equipment is without exception the main hardware under inspection. As far as production equipment is concerned, verification refers to a series of activities such as the reliability of the process equipment, the stability of the main operating parameters, and the reproducibility of the operating results through the linkage test method, so its practical significance is simulated production. GMP implements full control over various factors that affect the quality of food production. The core is to ensure that the whole process of food production is under quality control and minimizes the chance of accidents with food production quality.

5. Concluding remarks As engineering and technical personnel and production managers of food processing enterprises, they must understand the food manufacturing and processing processes and production management methods that meet the GMP requirements. The production of qualified foods is inseparable from the processing equipment that meets the GMP requirements. Only by fully understanding and mastering the basic requirements and management of food preparation equipment by GMP can the equipment selection, operation, maintenance and maintenance be well done. Only good at this key link from the equipment can be found in the production process. Product quality factors can improve equipment management and prevent pollution from occurring.