Cleaning-in-Place (CIP) describes a process with the purpose of removal of deposit layers, or ‘soil’, from the internal surfaces of process equipment such as pipes, vessels, filters and related fittings, without dismantling, and with the use of a combination of chemicals, heat and water. CIP is an important industrial process, especially in food process plants, which could entail hundreds of metres of pipe work, many valves, pumps and instrumentation, and the use of large volumes of water, chemicals, and energy and still has the risk of compromising process sterility.
Industrial Computer Aided Tomography (CAT or CT) Scanning Technology utilizes the same type of technology as the medical field’s CT scanning machines. Among the various technologies available in CAT Scanning, Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) has become a popular technique in industrial process monitoring and analysis. ERT measurements involve the acquisition of boundary voltages from electrodes positioned on the periphery of a process vessel. After injection of current, the boundary voltages which change due to the change of conductivity distribution on the electrode plane, are measured. With inverse calculation algorithms, the boundary voltages can be transformed into reconstructed cross-sectional images of the process vessel. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the use of ERT as a new approach in analysing the comprehensive spatial and time-varying conductivity changes during a CIP process to determine the ending point of the whole cleaning process.
Undergraduate
The objective of this research project is to evaluate the application of ERT to the monitoring and control of a milk flow rig CIP process.
Research questions:
- Current state of CIP process in dairy process plants
- Current problematic issues or difficulties in CIP of dairy process plants
- Experiment the application of ERT in monitoring the CIP process in a milk flow rig
- Evaluate the advantageous potentials of ERT in resolving the current CIP issues
- Evaluate and propose a control strategy for the CIP process of a milk flow rig
None
No lab has been assigned to this project