The benefits of a properly designed CIP system will very often provide tangible paybacks to justify the capital outlay
These include:
- Repeatability. Being independent of the plant operator the system will reproduce its defined program and maintain a record of each cleaning cycle.
- Elimination of dead legs or product/CIP mixing. Once the extent of each program has been incorporated into the process description the system will check each system component for correct position before the cycle can start or proceed.
- Economy of detergent, water or other rinse medium, steam, compressed air and effluent.
- The duration of each program step is optimised, rinses may be recovered and reused as pre-rinses and regenerative heat recovery avoids thermal shock to the plant and saves energy.
- Low labour costs. A system that does not require operator supervision but will call attention to system failures as they occur before the cleaning cycle can proceed.
- Safety. Eliminates conditions which may cause damage to process plant such as vessel implosion due to vacuum created by following hot cleaning cycle with cold rinse.
