Cat Pumps remove labels on Coors keg cleaning line 10 April 2013

Molson Coors brewery in Alton is reporting a solution to the problem of removing identification labels from beer kegs – using high pressure positive displacement plunger pumps on its automated keg cleaning lines.

Keith Smith, for the company, explains that, because lager is a food, BRC regulations dictate that every stage of the brewing process has to be recorded and labelled for accountability reasons.

All returned kegs carry barcode labels, which need to be removed before the kegs can be reused, so the Molson Coors plant operates two automated keg cleaning lines able to clean the internal and external surfaces of 75,000 kegs a week.

Removing the labels is the first stage of the process. But when originally installed, the cleaning lines used centrifugal pumps to provide water for removing the labels – which was not wholly satisfactory.

So the brewery switched to triplex positive displacement plunger pumps, with each line being equipped with two Cat Pumps' 650 PD pumps. Now, however, each of the keg cleaning lines has been upgraded to a single larger Cat Pumps 3517 pump.

The labels are removed using water at a temperature below 20ºC pumped at 1,500 psi through a rotating head inside the cleaning chamber.

"What we have done here in the Alton brewery is to standardise on the Cat Pumps Model 3517 for all the keg cleaning lines," says Smith.

"It makes good sense from the point of maintenance and we have ready access to the standard service kits and any spare parts, not that we have ever needed any," he continues.

"If you look after them, they are really good pumps and we never have any problems. They are fit for purpose and far more efficient than centrifugal pumps."

Smith explains that before installing the 3517 pumps, each cleaning line used two smaller triplex plunger pumps with a rotating head run off a cylinder. "The heads swivelled backwards and forwards, but it wasn't particularly effective, particularly as we had to use hot water to remove the labels.

"As the labels are now fixed to the kegs with water-permeable glue, we no longer use hot water and steam. Cold water pumped at 1,500 psi through a rotating head does the job very effectively and more economically," states Smith.

Brian Tinham

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