Application: Cleaning in Place
Segment: Personal Care (Skin Care)
Challenge: Equipment cleaning optimization (hard-to-clean cream with TiO2 and silicones)
Recommended Product: MCL B
Situation
A multinational company and a leader in dermocosmetics based in France was looking for a solution to optimize the cleaning of its process equipment after the production of a skin care cream. This hard to clean cream (water-in-oil, reverse emulsion with Titanium Oxide and silicones) required more than 8 hours to return the equipment to acceptable cleaning standards with the previous protocol, all the while consuming nearly 14,000 liters of water.
Even with the extensive cleaning time and high water consumption, the results, while compliant, were not ideal. The client sought a solution to reduce their water usage and decrease downtime while utilising their current equipment.
Solution
Ecolab's technical experts went onsite to assess customer's operations and determine where there was an opportunity to improve operational efficiency. They discovered that the current initial phase cleaning method that involved a soaking period with a mix of raw materials resulted in large water consumption and extensive cleaning times.
Following this site visit, Ecolab analyzed soil samples, and carried out lab-scale tests under plant parameters conditions to help identify an optimal cleaning agent. The resulting tests found Ecolab MCL B to be the ideal solution. This alkaline detergent is designed to remove pigmented soils and mineral containing premixes commonly found in the cosmetics industry.
It provided superior dispersing properties compared to the customer's current cleaning process, resulted into an improved cleaning performance towards mineral containing soils and in a shorter time frame.
The proposed cleaning process was implemented on-site in a trial run. This trial was very successful, replicating results observed at laboratory scale, and resulted in the company replacing its previous cleaning process.
Results
By implementing MCL B, the client was able to quickly realize an impact through the optimization of cleaning operations that created additional benefits.
The client reduced cleaning expenses in this process alone by $50,000 annually, while decreasing water consumption by 114,000 litres per year. The drop in downtime by introducing MCL B saved 63 hours of functional time which will allow for an additional production of 10 extra batches in a year.
