At World Wide Food Expo, Ecolab Focuses on Water Treatment

Water is an important resource for all food processors, but especially so for dairy producers, who both provide pasteurized milk and milk products ranging from ice cream to whey. As Keith Kennedy, a marketing manager at Ecolab (St. Paul, MN) points out, a dairy processor might be handling 4 gal of water (for cleaning, product formulation and utilities) for every gal of milk produced. Cutting water consumption, and minimizing the volumes of water needed for sanitizing, can impact the bottom line very directly.

To address these goals, Ecolab has introduced a new sanitizing agent, Matrixx, currently being featured in its booth at World Wide Food Expo (Chicago, Oct. 29-Nov. 2), and has set up a comprehensive water conservation and product recovery service, brandnamed WaterWorx.

Matrixx is a "broad-spectrum, peroxyacetic acid microbial agent," which actually is expected to replace a highly successful product of its own, Oxonia. Oxonia's main active ingredient is peracetic acid. "Oxonia has been very successful, but some customers wanted a product that was more effective against molds and fungi," says Kennedy. "In addition, many dairy processors expect their sanitizing agent to reduce mineral films in process equipment from hard water, and so they want a higher-acidity product." Kennedy says that Matrixx is superior on both points, and has numerous advantages over phosphoric acid or chlorine-based sanitizers.

But Matrixx is only the beginning of the benefits Ecolab offers. The company's WaterWorx program involves an engineering evaluation of water use in a plant, combined with redesign of process piping to minimize dairy product wastage. By more efficiently collecting product prior to sanitation runs or process changeovers, Ecolab can reduce the BOD of wastewater, and simultaneously recover valuable product. Some highly efficient dairy processors can cut their water-to-milk ratios as low as 1:1.

Ecolab's Food and Beverage Div. is headquartered at 370 Wabasha St. N., St. Paul, MN 55102; tel: 1 800 392 3392. At World Wide Food Expo, its booth is #1728.