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Glass breakage procedure in a fast-paced bottling plant

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Landi Pelser

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Posted 18 June 2020 - 12:04 PM

I work in a fast-paced, semi-automated bottling plant. The filling area is enclosed and operated by a bottling operator, thus if a bottle breaks or bursts inside that area, the system is set to deliberately under-fill (reject) bottles on the conveyor before and after the burst, as well as to do a spray rinse of the area. 

How does one validate and verify that such a procedure is effective? it would be impossible and uneconomical to place the whole area and personnel on hold just because a bottle broke, (which can happen frequently), as per the normal/strict glass breakage procedures and templates I've seen.

 

Any recommendations, examples or templates would be much appreciated? 



SQFconsultant

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Posted 18 June 2020 - 12:43 PM

Why does this happen so often?

 

I'd be looking to the root cause first.

 

In the past we had a high-speed glass (soda) bottling facility that used an led scanner to check the bottles prior to fill - close to 100% nixies were isolated and dropped out the bottom of the machine and the fillers only had one or two bottles break a week in which case they auto stopped the line for clean up, inspection and release back to production.

 

I'd be more interested in finding why this happens so often first.


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Landi Pelser

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Posted 18 June 2020 - 12:55 PM

Thanks for you input Glenn - I'll definitely go back and firstly check our specs with the supplier to determine root cause. 

 

My question is then, once a bottle breaks by the filler, how do you validate and verify that the automatic cleaning system was sufficient?

Small glass shards are not always visible when doing a visual inspection inside a bottle. 

 

Regards.



AmeliaJacobs

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Posted 14 January 2022 - 11:45 AM

I'm curious as to whether or not you've found any resolution.

 

i'm working in a bottling plant now and I'm fairly new to this sector. The system in place here is a monitoring device similar to what you've described. In the past, it was our practice to introduce a marked bottle, damaged enough to break and verify that the established pattern around it was rejected, based on visual evidence and the machine's log.

However, our recently acquired parent company has made the totally reasonable assertion that perhaps introducing broken glass is not the best practice in avoiding it....

We do keep a #100 mesh screen for checking the bottles around the reject, but as you say, how does one check that? Unless we slowed down the filler dramatically and waited (perhaps days...) for a bottle to break, there's no way. 



lorlandini

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Posted 14 January 2022 - 06:14 PM

I have worked in the beverage industry since 1988.  The fact is bottles will explode when counter-pressuring the bottle.   Besides culling bottles before and after the exploded bottle, I always like to do a visual inspection of the sealing rubber on the filler valve that the contained the exploded bottle.   Glass shards can and have become stuck in the sealing rubber and unless you inspect and/or replace, you have the potential of introducing the glass shards to additional bottles during the filling process.

 

If you have a high speed line and and encountering frequent explosions, I would definitely start a conversation with your glass supplier.

 

Leo



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Posted 05 May 2023 - 06:00 AM

Hi, 
I am currently verifying our bottle-burst system. I have been advised to filter the contents of the bottles before and after breakage (preferably via membrane filtration) and then use a microscope to check whether there are any glass splinters in them. In this way it can be determined how many bottles have to be rejected in each case. How many bottles do you automatically reject in a bottle burst system? And for how many filling rounds?
 
Flecki


DHeronBend

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Posted 05 May 2023 - 04:49 PM

Flecki,

Our system rejects 3 bottles on each side of the bottle break from 2 rotations.  This would be 12 bottles around the break and 2 bottles from the filler head that had the break for a total of 14 bottles.  If the bottle breaks prior to the filler or post the filler we will clear and reject all bottles in the filler room.  This would be 32 from the filler, 8 from the capper, and 24 from bottles entering and exiting the bottle rinser.  The reason  for this is that we did the testing you are describing and found glass shrapnel in the most unlikely places.  So, out of precaution we just clear out this many bottles and do a complete stop and wash down to remove as much glass as possible from the incident area.  

 

David



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GMO

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Posted 08 May 2023 - 08:11 AM

I'm potentially going to be going into bottling soon so this is really interesting to me.

 

Is there a way to validate the failsafe because that's what it seems like it is?  I.e. the rejection before and after.  Could you do some extensive testing to prove absence beyond the rejected bottles?  It would need some robust prerequisites though to make sure it doesn't drift, particularly preventive maintenance.  Then you'd have to be mega cautious in looking for glass complaints and tracing it back to your bottle smashes.  You'd want time data within your lot coding so you could be alerted if it's failing.

 

But I agree with the comments above.  Why do so many break?  Maybe I'm being naïve but it would be great to build knowledge around glass bottles and what faults can occur in them which cause weak points.  I'm assuming there will be many and also that they will be detectable given time / effort.  



lorlandini

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Posted 08 May 2023 - 12:03 PM

Not sure what type of filler you are using, but most bottle explosions on a filler occur when the bottle is being counter pressurized just prior to filling.  That is where 100% of our bottle failures occur.  

 

We use this method and for the six years, I have been at this facility, we have not received a complaint of glass in the bottle.  We pull two bottles from the leading side of the exploded bottle and six from the trailing side of the exploded bottle.  We then rinse the affected valve with high volume low pressure water stream.  We then removed the sealing rubber and inspect for glass shards and replace if needed.  We also pull the vent tube from the valve and rinse that out with water and replace if needed.   We record all of this information on our CCP documentation sheet and then start back up.  We will also pull two bottles from the affected valve.

 

95% of our breakage occurs with one glass supplier.  A lot of their bottles have thin walls on one side.  Other glass supplier has a small amount of breakage.

 

Talk to your glass supplier.   Not only do the explosions pose a food safety risk, they also cause downtime and loss of product.



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