An Italian company that recently supplied the multinational PepsiCo with a glass bottle washing machine.
Akomag is a flexible and dynamic company that bases its policy on customer satisfaction, the quality of its systems, its assistance services and technological innovation. Akomag has been working for several years in the bottling sector, and thanks to the experience acquired in this field can guarantee to its customers reaching the maximum yields, user-friendly operation, minimum operational costs and a long working life of its machines built with top-quality certified materials.
Recently Akomag delivered, installed, and tested a new machine for the PepsiCo Group intended for washing recycled glass bottles at high speeds. It is the bottle rinser Hydra 8.2, which reaches speeds of 37,500 b/h and has a mechanical efficiency equal to 99.4%. With these numbers Akomag has surpassed the standards required by the customer in the contractual phase, once again confirming its position as the world leader in the construction of glass bottle washers.
A low-impact machine
The bottle washer Hydra 8.2 has been specially designed in order to minimise the environmental impact, with particular attention to water and steam consumptions, and to the duration of the detergent bath. The fully automated washing cycle includes an initial bottle-emptying station followed by a pre-wash spraying and double pre-soak bath, elements that significantly reduce the pollution of the maceration bath and energy consumptions.
In the pre-soak area Akomag has installed a belt filter that allows to automatically remove the main impurities typical of recycled bottles (straws, paper, cigarette butts, for instance). The washing of bottles is completed with the internal and external high-pressure detergent wash sprays, using self-cleaning and self-centring rotating nozzles. A series of sprays (at decreasing temperature) instead provide complete rinsing, accompanying the bottles to the final rinsing phase with mains water.
Just on the final rinse spray (fed as previously mentioned with mains water) Akomag has focused its attention. The solutions developed during the design phase, in fact, have allowed to achieve results beyond customer’s expectations. By installing a special valve with integrated flow meter on the mains pipe (controlled directly by the control panel), it is possible to detect the instantaneous and daily water consumption required for the proper washing of the bottles. This was a great satisfaction for Akomag engineers and designers, who, through their design solutions, managed to achieve a water consumption of 0.098 l/bottle, which is a lower value than the strict contractual requirement of the customer.
The equipment integrates many other technological innovations, including sensors for slowing down or stopping the machine in case of “bottle missing” or “bottle accumulation” on the conveyor belts; synchronization systems of the bottle washer speed with that of the filling monobloc; control and introduction of detergent and additives in the washing bath and of sequestrants/disinfectants in the spray tanks; self-cleaning filters in the tanks; automatic bottle loading and unloading, perfectly synchronized with the movement of the main chain.
