FSSC 22000 - What Compressed Air Controls are Required?

Need some advice here. next week my company will have an audit on FSSC 22000. I would like to ask regarding air compressor , is it consider  non conformance if we didn't install a filter at the point of use to control the compressed air quality. for your information we only use the air compressor for machine cleaning purpose and in the pneumatic machine. One more question, is it ok to have reading on oil contaminant in the compressed air since our air compressor oil is food grade?

Someone please help me :helpplease:

Hi Farizah,

I think that you are saying there is possible incidental product contact, so yes there should be a filter, if you refer to TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION ISO/TS 22002-1 Prerequisite programmes on food safety — Part 1: Food manufacturing you will see:

6.5 Compressed air and other gases
Compressed air, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other gas systems used in manufacturing and/or filling shall be constructed and maintained so as to prevent contamination.
Gases intended for direct or incidental product contact (including those used for transporting, blowing or drying materials, products or equipment) shall be from a source approved for food contact use, filtered to remove dust, oil and water.
Where oil is used for compressors and there is potential for the air to come into contact with the product, the oil used shall be food grade.
Use of oil free compressors is recommended.
Requirements for filtration, humidity (RH%) and microbiology shall be specified.
Filtration of the air should be as close to the point of use as is practicable.

Regards,

Tony

Hi Tony,

Thanks for your explaination. Appreciate it. What about if the oil is detected in the compressed air. Is it become a risk to our product because our compressor oil is food grade? My maintenance arguing this issue with me...

Hi Tony,

 

 

Thanks for your explaination. Appreciate it. What about if the oil is detected in the compressed air. Is it become a risk to our product because our compressor oil is food grade? My maintenance arguing this issue with me...

Hi Farizah,

I would say that the risk from food grade oil is probably minimum and your maintenance people may be right but you don't want 'crap' from compressed air near your product and the standard quite clearly states that filtration is required, show it to them:

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION ISO/TS 22002-1 Prerequisite programmes on food safety — Part 1: Food manufacturing you will see:

6.5 Compressed air and other gases
Gases intended for direct or incidental product contact (including those used for transporting, blowing or drying materials, products or equipment) shall be from a source approved for food contact use, filtered to remove dust, oil and water.

Regards,

Tony

Dear farizah,

 "food grade" as applied to a compressor oil is of a somewhat different edibility as compared to, say. food grade salt.

Additionally to Tony's reference, and depending on the specific application, some recommended limits for "oil" content in delivered compressed air do exist, eg as in the BCAS COP for Food Grade Compressed Air.

Rgds / Charles.C

Hi Tony and Charles,

Noted on that. Thanks for the exlplanation :spoton:

Hello Farizah-

I would like to point out something that is often misunderstood when discussing food grade oil and oil that can be found in your compressed air. The "intake" of your compressor will pull in oil from the ambient air. So simply using food grade oil does not by any stretch mean that you will not have an oil problem. The oil that is pulled in by the compressor is not always going to be food grade. That oil is more likely coming from vehicles and other pollution found in typical ambient air. Many folks think they don't need to test for oil because they are using food grade oil in their system. This thought process is false. Not testing oil levels because of this belief can lead to oil contamination of the final product. It is also important to use a lab that has the ability to measure oil as low as 0.01mg/m3, otherwise again, you risk contamination of your final product because measurements were not low enough to detect problems.

Hope this helps! It is a GREAT question that many people are misinformed on.

If I can ever assist please feel free to contact me! Laura

Hello,

Thank you for this discussion. I this requirement also strictly required on packaging company? Another thing is we are not pursuing ISO and I'm sure our management would argue that we are not going for ISO and BRC for packaging is not so specific as this line posted by Tony.

Thank you always!

Thanks very much Laura for the insight.

If I can ever assist please feel free to contact me! Laura

 

Ah!  Emails are a no-no on these forums, you'll get a ton of spam from bots crawling the web.  But it's great to have another resource to talk to, and we can always use the messaging system to send individuals contact info for outside the forums.

I agree with Tony.  Once the filter is in place, maintenance should include that in the maintenance program.

Requirements for filtration, humidity (RH%) and microbiology shall be specified.
Filtration of the air should be as close to the point of use as is practicable.

 

So there is no specified humidity lvl? Because I am trying to get a new compressed air system with a cold dryer -40°C to ensure a really low humidity (now we have -5°C).

how do we verify the effectivity of filter used in compressed air

microbiological -> test air samples from before filter and after filter on spores and any type of microorganismen that might be harmful to your customer

We are doing a weekly monitoring. After a while you can see a trending -> number of MO rises its time for a filter change -> maybe you can adjust monitoring frequence based on the results you have

Regarding physical contaminants.... maybe depending on the system you can measure pressure? So in case a filter is blocked usually the resistance rises...

How do you specify "Filtration of the air should be as close to the point of use as is practicable"?

As I know our filter is placed ~100m before point of use.... I guess thats too far away...

thank you very much sir.. may I ask what frequency would you recoment for microbial verification?

As I said we do weekly measurements, but I guess it depends on your target group and their sensitivity to microbes.

Our "consumers" are babies thats why our frequence is relatively high.

I assume for adults monthly monitoring would be enough. What do the others think? I guess it depends on the initial situation. So when you have no clue at all about the microbiological quality of your compressed air you should do more testing and after a while you can adapt the frequency depending on the results.

In fact, as usual, a risk assessment is involved. The required microbiological "quality" of the delivered compressed air is a function of your process (and maybe yr FS standard / local regulatory requirements (if any)), eg see this post and the surrounding posts -

http://www.ifsqn.com...ent/#entry81054

Rgds Charles.C

 

Hi everyone,
 

Need some advice here. next week my company will have an audit on FSSC 22000. I would like to ask regarding air compressor , is it consider  non conformance if we didn't install a filter at the point of use to control the compressed air quality. for your information we only use the air compressor for machine cleaning purpose and in the pneumatic machine. One more question, is it ok to have reading on oil contaminant in the compressed air since our air compressor oil is food grade?

 

 

Someone please help me :helpplease:

The food grade food grade oil is only an element in the compressed air process for the food industry. In compressed air, the main vector is water. Associated with water are aerosols, vapors and odors and particles. Eliminating particles is the easiest process. Three-dimensional borosilicate micro-fiber construction filters, commonly used in compressed air filtration and called coalescing filters, remove solid particles with high efficiency at efficiencies that can reach 99.9999% relative to the pore diameter: 1 micron ; 0.1 micro, 0.01 micro (most common). It is understood that the more pollution there is (pollution in the environment) the greater the loss of load in the compressed air system. Water and oil (hydrocarbon) vapors, depends on many factors: the first is the ambient temperature and the concentration of humidity in the air (RH). As an example: if you are in a region with very high ambient temperature and this environment carries a high H.R., the filters will remove a small part. We must not forget that all equipment and certifications of compressed air equipment and their performances are referred to 20 / 21ºC. Its efficiency at 30 or 40ºC will be absolutely distinct. Much worse. This is where the compressed air dryers come in. In a basic installation, for the general industry without a specific purpose, the dew point under pressure (pdp) of 3 ° C (37 ° F) is commonly accepted. In order to obtain this dew point, it is usually used the refrigerating dryers, which cheaply removes a large percentage of water. However, by measuring the amount of water vapor contained after this thermal shock, through a hygrometer suitable for quantifying the amount of water vapor present, we reach about 7,500 ppm (v) at the standard pressure of 7 bar. As has already been proven and with numerous international publications on the subject, it is concluded that for the development of microorganisms in the air at this pressure (7bar), it is necessary that the air reaches at least the pdp of -26ºC, so that such microorganisms, become spores and then removed as particles. There is only one feasible and safe process for drying compressed air for the food industry: it is using adsorption dryers with molecular sieves based on alumina, zeolite or silica gel. The most widely used in the food, pharmaceutical and hospital industries is active alumina. With these dryers known as desiccant dryers, the pdp of -40 is easily reached. The water vapor content measured by the same process is reduced to about 130 ppm. So if you now have dehydrated air with this value (or better) activated carbon and particle filters work flawlessly. And here we speak in the oil of the food grade class: this oil does not stop being a fossil oil. Its function is to prevent accidents that do not contaminate food in such a way that they are unfit for consumption. But we must not forget that with humid air (and with pdp 3ºC the air still has 7,500 ppm (v) of water vapor) the air has the optimal conditions to develop microorganisms. Therefore it can not in itself be suitable for applications in direct contact with food, or without contact but at risk. Here we come to the recommendation of the BCAS that decidedly recommends pdp -40ºC, oil elimination 0.01 mg / m3 and less than 400,000 particles in accordance with the stipulated by ISO 8.573: 2010, which then raises the standard for class 1 in hydrocarbon (0.01 mg / m3) Class 2 for water vapor pdp -40ºC and suspended solids class 1 or 2). A lot would be said about this, namely oil-free compressors vs lubricated compressors, but it stays for another occasion. Do not forget, to stop the development of microorganisms in the air it is necessary to reach at least the pdp of -26ºC. This is my fight.