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Reference project
Elimination of black mold at dairy facility
Introduction.
The cheese production increased thanks to the warehouse ozonation
In this case, our customer is located in a small town in the central parts of Norway.
Despite its small size, the history of this town goes back in time to about 6000 years ago. Nowadays, our customer—the largest Norwegian dairy company—is one of the main industries located there.
The company was first founded in 1928 and many decades and name changes later, it now has a revenue of approximately 25 billion NOK and over 5 000 employees. It is also, by a wide margin, the biggest dairy company on the Norwegian market. In the central part of the town, the company’s industrial plant produces a type of soft cheese called “hvitmuggost” and other renowned products include e.g. Jarlsberg cheese and Ski-Queen cheese. The plant has a capacity of around 230 tons of cheese per year.
The problem.
One of the stages in the cheese production process is letting the wheels of cheese ripen. These wheels need to be stored in a large warehouse until they are ready to be packed and sold. The aging time lasts for several weeks, depending on the hardness of the desired product. During this time, the wheels are vulnerable to attacks from microorganisms such as black mold.
This resistant parasite is one of the most common in food industries. By growing on the wheels, the mold contaminates the product, which is in turn makes the product unfit for sale. The town’s industrial plant exhibited extensive black mold growth in various locations, especially in the storage warehouse. The whole production process was sub-optimal, making it difficult to predict the annual production.
The solution.
Mellifiq was commissioned to sanitize the entire warehouse, which had a total volume of 8000 m3. While mold removal was the main purpose of the treatment, other microorganisms were also considered. Bacteria—such as legionella and salmonella—may also occur in these venues, and viruses, just like in all environments, were also a potential threat. Finally, the sanitation treatment also had to prevent any possible spread of bacteria and viruses in the warehouse in addition to treating them.
For this tough application, we selected the Ozonetech RENA Pro Ozone System, model B6. The Ozonetech RENA Pro systems are Mellifiq’s premium choice for air treatment, with the B-series being suitable for medium to high air treatment needs. It is also possible to upgrade your B-series system if necessary. These systems are fully integrated with all components mounted on a compact skid, and once delivered, all they need is a power supply in order to start producing ozone.
The ozone outlet was split into various injection points, and the treatment area was divided into various sectors with one injection point per sector. This division was done in order to ensure a homogeneous ozone concentration throughout the warehouse.
We started by deciding on a test period of one month for our ozone system . During this period, we focused on finding the optimal settings, combining an effective mold removal with short treatment times. For this application, 3 ppm of ozone were applied for up to 10 hours in order to complete the sanitation cycle.
Mellifiq delivery
Dimensions (HxWxD)
1,800 x 600 x 800 mm
Weight
120 kg
Input power
2.3 kW
Performence
Complete mold removal with regrowth prevention
Evaluation.
The results clearly showed how successful the final sanitation solution was: the black mold was completely removed, with no occurrences of regrowth. After the initial testing period, our client was more than happy to keep the RENA Pro system due to its proven performance.
The benefits of ozonation were multiple:
- Increased production capacity by more than 10 %
- Opening up for accurate predictions in the yearly budget
- Reduction in labour time for manual cleaning
- Safer working enviroment due to prevention of bacterial and viral growth
We are very pleased to know that, since the very first day that we installed our system, we managed to solved this tough sanitation problem for our client.
