Organic cleaning and sanitation - trending toward aqueous ozone

So we're considering a change in some of our cleaning and sanitation chemicals. We are organic certified currently, but we've got some different cleaning methods around the plant depending on customer demand, and I'd like to tie them all into one system. For the background information, we primarily process dehydrated vegetables and do not handle allergens at this time.

1) If you don't mind sharing, I'd like to hear what products some of your organic facilities are using at the moment for cleaning and sanitation.

2) As I research, I find myself really, really, really liking aqueous ozone. Reading an article from 2003 (cited below), it's approved by the FDA as a food contact sanitizer and leaves no residue, which makes it perfect for organic use (not to mention it's even approved for direct food application, meaning no contamination concern). So I started researching a bit more and some of the manufacturers of the ozone generators are claiming that it's a validated cleaning step too. Is anyone here using ozone in their facilities? If so, share an experience?


Article I discussed above.

One of many companies claiming ozone is cleaner AND sanitizer in one

Dear john,

Some ozone experiences here (there are others) -

http://www.ifsqn.com...indpost&p=58076

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__57409

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__40243

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__54476

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__45369

http://www.ifsqn.com...indpost&p=19760

Rgds / Charles.C

Got'cha. Saw those too when I searched first, but those threads all pertain to washing or treating the product. I should've been more clear that we are looking at it from an equipment sanitation standpoint (edited above).

Our business is 3rd party dehydrated vegetable manufacturing. We have several clients who send us their dehydrated products, and our scope of work does not include sanitizing product (nor would we even have the authority to treat any customer product without their express consent). We simply store, mill, grind, blend, and package. Our goal is to control micro while the product is here via effective sanitation of equipment, which we've accomplished, but we're looking to take it to the next step. Sorry for the confusion on my end.

Dear john,

No problem. There were a few surface sanitation items also but mostly blatantly promotional so ignored.

I did notice some pro/con tabulated data -
a5.xls   460.5KB   34 downloads

This website looked relatively neutral and has a collection of downloadable documents (approx 2007), eg attachments a3,a6-a9 below
http://www.ozonecip.net/index.htm
a3 - Ozonetechnology.pdf   214.6KB   33 downloads
a6 - Laymans_report_OzoneCip.pdf   873.49KB   34 downloads
a7 - Cleaning and CIP techniques.pdf   133.41KB   31 downloads
a8 - Cleaning and disinfection and BAts.pdf   60.55KB   21 downloads
a9 - ozone Annex 22 Valencia Conference ainia ozone cip.pdf   276.9KB   28 downloads

Ozone has been around a long time and certainly found favour in some (niche?) applications, perhaps “organic” could be another one. Does appear to be well-promoted in USA at any rate. Some of its COSHH characteristics look rather fearsome and textbooks seem not wildly enthusiastic. However I recall seeing some articles discussing recent technological improvements in delivery systems for water treatment.

Good Luck !

Rgds / Charles.C

Hmmm. Well these articles were an eye opener. Hadn't occured to me that a highly oxidized water molecule would attack metal, but in hindsight it should've been blindingly obvious. While the ozone itself wouldn't be leaving a residue, it's hard to justify bringing in a new cleaner that is going to promote rust on all my metal food contact surfaces.

The search continues.