When people open their kitchen cabinet, they probably don’t think about how the icing was drizzled on their favorite cookies or how a bottle of apple juice was filled. They most likely assume that their cans of vegetables will be good to eat for months and their bags of snacks will stay fresh.
People don’t have to think about these things because today’s Food and Beverage Industry uses a variety of processes to ensure the safety and quality of all types of products.
And in many of these processes, fluid control plays a critical role.
Advantages of Equilibar technology for pressure, flow and vacuum control
Equilibar® valves and regulators offer unique advantages for pressure, flow and vacuum control in a variety of processes throughout the Food and Beverage Industry. Equilibar devices react instantaneously and maintain control across an operating range that is much wider than traditional valves can accommodate. Equilibar technology has proven to be especially useful for spray coating, bottle filling, vacuum canning, and packaging applications in the Food and Beverage Industry.
Bottle Filling & Spray Coating
Filling bottles and other beverage containers requires the use of valves that are capable of providing extremely precise pressure control. Similarly, spray systems used in food processing–for coating candies or cleaning fruit, for example–work most effectively at a very specific pressure setpoint. 
One of the challenges in spray coating and bottle filling systems is maintaining control during start-up and shut down. It might take several seconds during machine start-up for all of the nozzles to activate as the items being sprayed or bottles being filled move along the conveyor line. The opposite situation occurs at machine shutdown as the conveyor slows down and the last item passes under the spray nozzle manifold. During these ramping up and down times, the flow volume through the spraying or filling line can vary dramatically.
In these situations, a good solution is to install a high-speed back pressure regulator near the exit of the nozzle manifold and recirculate the fluid back to the pump inlet. This solution offers significant advantages for applications experiencing persistent pressure fluctuations. The Equilibar FDO sanitary back pressure regulator (BPR) is a high precision device that responds in milliseconds to pressure changes at its inlet, making it well suited for these scenarios.
Vacuum Canning
In vacuum canning, pumps are used to remove air from a can just prior to filling. As the speed of the filling line changes, there is a corresponding change in the required flow rate. Unless a precision, high-capacity vacuum regulator is used, these changes in flow can have a significant effect on the vacuum applied to the can. Vacuum pressure fluctuations can negatively affect fill accuracy or cause splashing or even the collapse of the can.
Like the Equilibar BPR, the Equilibar vacuum regulator (EVR) reacts almost instantaneously in response to fluctuations in flow, maintaining a steady vacuum setpoint as the speed of the filling line changes.
Food Packaging
Many food packaging applications use Modified Atmosphere Packaging in which air is rapidly removed and an inert gas is substituted. To do this economically, the gas exchange process must occur quickly, which is a difficult scenario for many traditional gas handling components. It is also important that the vacuum be consistent from package to package and not deviate from the setpoint. The Equilibar EVR is a good fit for this demanding application. By providing stable vacuum pressures under rapidly varying flow rates, the EVR dramatically reduces the atmospheric variability from package to package, thereby improving the quality of the product and the productivity of the process.
Equilibar Flow Control Valves for Food & Beverage Applications
Equilibar valves are also popular for challenging flow control systems within the Food and Beverage Industry. Specific advantages include:
- Ability to handle extremely wide Cv ranges
- Ability to maintain stable control with mixed phase liquid-gas flow
- Multi-Orifice design that enables use with viscous fluids or slurries
- A variety of sanitary designs and custom materials of construction
To learn more about Equilibar’s approach to fluid control in the Food and Beverage Industry, see our Food and Beverage page. For those especially interested in the topic, be sure to check out an article in Valve Magazine that focuses on aspects of fluid control for alternative proteins including cultivated meat and fermented mycelium. Written by Equilibar engineer Diane Jacober, the article focuses on topics such as controlling transmembrane pressure in the reactor, sterilizing equipment, and tank blanketing.
And, as always, please do not hesitate to contact one of our application engineers to discuss your specific fluid control challenge.