Reclarified vinegar for vegetables

Geest Prepared Foods processes a wide range of fruits and vegetables, including carrots, celery, apples, onions and peppers, which are sold through a number of retail chains. Before the fruits and vegetables are sliced and cooked, it is important that they are thoroughly cleaned and disinfected to remove any remaining dirt or unwanted biological and microbial matter.

The plant, with a payback period of six months, can recycle 400 litres of vinegar every hour.

In operation, the used vinegar from the dipping bath is pumped from a storage tank to the ultrafiltration plant, where it is circulated through the inside of the hollow fibres by a centrifugal pump. Re-clarified, recycled vinegar passes to the outside of the fibre into a clear cartridge shell, while any vegetable matter and colour is retained by the membrane and passed to a storage tank. The recycled vinegar can be passed back to the dip tank for further use. The concentrate from the filtration process is pumped on to the existing on-site chemical treatment plant, where a much reduced volume than before is passed to drain, while the remaining solid waste is tankered away.

The plant offers product recovery of more than 99%, enabling savings in cost of bought-in vinegar, which is now used simply to top up the bath and maintain pH levels.