Food and beverage manufacturers are always looking for ways to improve production and save money. From overfilling/underfilling and spoilage to regulatory compliance and ensuring a clean environment, manufacturers are challenged with meeting narrow quality control parameters. Spoilage costs add up—on average inventory spoilage accounts for $35 billion a year, impacting businesses’ gross income, according to K-Analytics.
As the company’s latest launch, Optiswitch 6500 is a capacitance level switch to precisely measure flow, level, pressure and circulation during the filling process. In simple terms, a capacitance switch is a probe inserted into liquid or solid to detect both the level and the changes of the material in a container. Its role is to ensure product consistency, prevention of waste and spoilage from overfilling, meet legal requirements and improve efficiency.
A common challenge in capacitance level switches is its sensitivity to build-up or foam caused by gas, evaporation, condensation or chemical reactions, which can adversely impact the accuracy and consistency of a final product. Some capacitance level switches are designed with a special coating to repel foam, while others have a self-cleaning mechanism to remove build-up on the probe; Optiswitch 6500 accounts for both effects by measuring the effects of build-up and foam (in beer and soda, for example) in the presence of the liquid to provide accurate and reliable fills.
“Unaffected by foam, condensate, or build-up, the product can be set to detect foam, or even changes in media characteristics of the same liquid. The product is also resistant to Clean-In-Place (CIP) and Steam-In-Place (SIP) agents, which are often used in food and beverage operations,” the company stated in a press release.
How do reliable, accurate fills impact food and beverage manufacturers?
Automation continues to offer simplicity and precision in food and beverage, whether it’s utilizing AI for innovation, leveraging data from marketing firms, personalizing products, prioritizing sustainability and clean ingredients and managing production through data tracking.
Optiswitch 6500 is an addition the industry’s ongoing transition to digital and automatic processes by reducing the need for manual checks, preventing overflows to save time and money, improve quality control through correct fills and reducing contamination risks for facilities of all sizes.
“Typical applications of the OPTISWITCH 6500 range from small tanks in hygienic applications to tanks with tough, pasty, or strongly adhesive media. The product can also provide block prevention, overflow protection, dry-run and pump protection in tanks. A range of detections, from interface detection to high and low-level detection to detection of foam, are all achievable with this hygienic switch,” the company stated in a press release.
