aseptic Laboratory Filler Usage & Applications
Insights of MicroThermics Aseptic Laboratory Filler
Consumers have become more health-conscious, increasing the demand for food and beverages with preservative-free products like aseptic bottle filling machine with long shelf lives. Batch or hot-fill processes cause too much damage to products. Thus, aseptic processing (continuous sterilization) with Aseptic Filling Equipment has become extremely popular. This popularity has led to increased research and development of aseptic bottle filling machine & packaging products.
Beverage companies’ desire to apply cold aseptic filling to a wide range of beverages has increased the requirement to aseptically produce small quantities of these beverages for various product development activities, such as shelf-life testing, physical stability testing, and product/package interaction studies. Our Aseptic Laboratory Fillers and aseptic bottle filling machine allow researchers to fill new beverages into consumer-style plastic bottles with high levels of sterility assurance right in the laboratory.
How does our Aseptic Laboratory Filler Work?
It works extremely well! Like commercial Aseptic Fillers, the objective of our Aseptic Laboratory Filler is to sterilize bottles (and caps), then fill and seal them with the sterile products, within a sterile environment. MicroThermic’s Aseptic Laboratory Fillers are linear. The bottles enter the machine on a conveyor. Once inside, the bottles are filled and partially covered with a vaporous sterilant, then proceed into the sterile zone. In the sterile zone, the bottles are dried with a jet of hot, sterile air for decontamination and then moved to the filling station. After bottles are filled with sterile products, they are automatically capped with sterilized bottle caps. The capped bottles then leave the sterile zone and the filler.
An overview of the main steps of the MicroThermics Aseptic Laboratory Filler is shown in the diagram below.
Applications
MicroThermics Laboratory Aseptic Liquid Filling Machines are used for a wide variety of applications, such as:
- Preparation of samples for taste panels and trade shows in true consumer-style packages
- Long-term product and package interaction studies
- Long-term shelf-life studies at ambient conditions
- Long-term physical stability studies
- Qualifying suitability of bottles and caps for aseptic filling
What are the differences and similarities between Production Aseptic Fillers and our Laboratory Aseptic Fillers?
Production and MicroThermics laboratory fillers have very different uses but have a great deal in common.
Production aseptic fillers are designed:
- To meet the high-speed sterile filling requirement of the market for the profitability
- To be filed for low acid filling with the FDA (within the USA)
- To minimize exposure to risk due to the high number of people consuming products
- For a narrow range of containers
- For long run times to produce high volumes of products and packages
Laboratory aseptic fillers are designed:
- For low-speed sterile filling of experimental products
- For filling into plastic bottles of different sizes and shapes
- For filling small batches of a variety of products, processed at a variety of conditions
- For flexibility required for R&D but are not designed to be filed for low-acid aseptic filling*
- For minimizing the risk associated with developing and processing new products
Just like in production as Aseptic Filling Machine Manufacturers, our fillers provide:
- 4-log reduction in the pharmaceutical filling chamber (a common requirement in the USA and internationally)
- 5-log reduction in the bottles and bottle caps (a common requirement in the USA and internationally)
- Continuous sterilization of bottles and caps
- Continuous filling and sealing of an aseptically processed product in a sterile environment into the sterilized containers
- Recording of data proving proper operation of processor and filler
What Products Can You Fill Using Microthermics Laboratory Aseptic Fillers?
- Juices
- Juices with pulp
- Milk and milk drinks
- Plant-based milk and other plant-based beverages
- Teas
- Coffee
- Meal replacements
- Nutritional and protein drinks
What Are The Benefits Of Investing In Our Aseptic Laboratory Filler?
Using these fillers along our UHT/HTST processors enables our clients to simulate the entire production process accurately and aseptically fill* a wide variety of beverages into consumer-style 250 mL, 500 mL, or 1,000 mL (or other size) bottles right in their lab.
These Aseptic Laboratory Fillers:
- Provide the ability to fill into multiple shapes and sizes of plastic bottles,
- Have small batch size requirements
- Can change over to different bottles quickly
- Have high sterility assurance levels
These benefits enable product developers to aseptically produce small quantities of a newly developed beverage efficiently and cost-effectively. By avoiding the use of aseptic production lines for research and development, our Laboratory Aseptic Fillers save beverage companies considerable time and money. They help companies bring new products to market faster. Lastly, their high levels of automation, simple operation, and durable construction makes these fillers extremely powerful R&D tools.
What are the Utility Requirements of this Filler?
- Single phase power
- Compressed Air
- Compressed Air Consumption
- Water
- Extraction
- Proper installation environment
* MicroThermics’ aseptic laboratory fillers are not designed to be filed with the FDA for low acid aseptic filling in the USA. For more information, including international regulations, please contact a MicroThermics representative.”