Customer Story Carbonated Drink Filling Line

Customer Introduction

Mr. Mohamed is a person with more than 10 years of experience in the beverage industry. He wanted to build a drink filling line for carbonated energy drinks. Hopefully, this drink can bring energy and deliciousness to young people.

Initially, Mr. Mohamed wanted to make a drink filling line for carbonated beverages in plastic bottles. To make a plastic bottle carbonated drink filling line, the necessary machines are plastic bottle blowing machine, carbonated beverage filling machine, carbonated beverage mixing machine, chiller, labeling machine, bottle warmer machine, packaging machine, inkjet printer, flat conveyor and air conveyor. Mr. Mohamed already has a beverage factory, so he don’t need to buy the water treatment, beverage blending system, air compressor system, steam boiler, etc.

Cutomer’s Requirement

According to Mr. Mohamed’s request, we made a plan for a 6,000 bottle-per-hour drink filling line and planned the layout of the entire drink filling line. We found that the entire drink filling line required a space of at least 20 meters long and 5 meters wide. The problem arose, and after repeated confirmation with Mohamed, he could only provide a space 30 meters long and 3 meters wide.

There is a serious shortage of width, how we solve it?

After carefully studying the layout diagram of the whole drink filling line, we found that the main thing is that the size of the blow molding machine is too large.

To cope with the filling output of 6,000 bottles per hour, we quoted a 6-cavity blow molding machine. The net width of the 6-cavity blow molding machine has exceeded 4 meters. If we want to put down the blow molding machine, we can only choose a smaller 2-cavity blow molding machine.

But in this way, the output capacity cannot match the filling machine, and the operation efficiency of the whole drink filling line will be greatly reduced. However, without changing the blow molding machine, the space with a width of 3 meters is simply not enough. Then we approached Mr. Mohamed with an idea: maybe we could replace plastic bottles with cans.

Change PET Bottle to Canned Drink Filling Line

In today’s beverage market, carbonated beverages are mainly use plastic bottles, cans and glass bottles. The carbonated beverage production line in glass bottles involves the bottles purchasing, recycling, and washing machines, which requires more space and money. We have covered it in the article Glass Bottle Filling Line. This is clearly not good for Mr. Mohamed. The carbonated drink filling line for cans does not need a bottle blowing machine, nor does it need a recycling and washing line for cans, which greatly reduces the pressure on his funds and plant space.

When we came up with cans for carbonated drinks. Mr. Mohamed pleasantly agreed. So, we started to prepare the layout plan and layout of the canned carbonated drink filling line. After a few days of hard work, our team completed the plan and layout of the canned carbonated drink filling line. The cost of the whole drink filling line is 30,000 US dollars less than that of the plastic bottle line, and the space requirement is only 20m*3m, which fully meets Mr. Mohamed’s requirements.

Canned Drink Filling Line

At this point, we finally determined that this was a carbonated drink filling line for cans. This line includes a can loading table, a can washing machine, a two-in-one can filling and sealing machine, a bottle warmer, a blow dryer, and the conveyor system for the whole drink filling line.

The carbonated beverage filling machine for cans is different from the carbonated beverage filling machine for plastic bottles. The filling machine for cans is not only for carbonated beverages but also for beer. In the article””, we have described the workflow of the can filler:

1. Transfer the cans to the filling valve.
2. Fill CO2 into cans before filling valve seal the cans.
3. Filling valve seal the can mouth and fills CO2 continuously. Air in the CO2 is flow out through the vent tube to the outside of the filling machine tank.
4. Close vent valve and continue filling the cans with CO2.
5. When the pressure in the CO2 is equal to the filling machine tank pressure, the filling valve opens. Drink flows into the cans under gravity.
6. When the liquid level reaches the vent tube, the filling stops
7. Open the vent valve release pressure.
8. The cans leave the filling valve and enter the sealer.
9. Mechanical valve opens, CO2 blow the remained drink in the filling valve out.

Advantage of The Can Filling Machine

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are to exhaust the air in the can as much as possible. So that the beverage contacts air as little as possible, and we can guarantee the CO2 content of the carbonated beverage. The air in the cans is discharged out of the filler through a special vent instead of back to the filling tank. This also ensures that the drinks in the filling tank come into contact with as little air as possible. It greatly reduces the probability of foam.

The step 9 is to blow away the residual beverage in the filling valve. So that the filling valve can be accurate, and the foam is less when the filling valve works in the next round of filling.

Mr. Mohamed’s filling machine is already in normal use. It is working conjunction with the mixer to achieve the effect of smooth operation and stable liquid level. In a future article, we will continue to introduce other machines in this line for canned carbonated beverages.