[AndrewR]

Hi everyone, I hope you're all ok.

I work as part of a Hygiene Team in a Food Production Factory and for years we have used pressure washers to clean the production lines and machinery (with chemicals obviously not just the pressure washers).

I have been advised recently that pressure wahers can cause more harm than good in that they can atomise bacteria and spread it around the factory but I am scratching my head as to what we could use as a hygienic alternative that would still have the washing power of a pressure washer?

There are hard to get to areas that we blast out with the pressure washer that I don't think standard hoses would get to.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions or know of alternative methods that would be as effective but more hygienic?

Any ideas would be gratefully received. Thank you.

Andrew.

[B Bailey]

Look at tensid website trek steam cleaner

[chris scott]

http://restorative-products.com/thermatech/

[trevor perry]

there are a lot of factors to take into consideration with your question, firstly surely if you are using sanitizer after cleaning then there should not be a problem from bacteria spread, are you getting poor swab results.
 if you do decide not to use pressure washers then you will need hot water and a very large flow rate which will add dramatically to the factories water cost and some areas will take longer to clean.
  Have you tried using your pressure washers with both a high pressure nozzle and a rinse nozzle attached with a tap to switch between the two this way you can adjust both the pressure and flow to suit what you are cleaning and only use the high pressure where needed
 Chris suggestion of a thermatech machine would work but be a little slow and you would also have to ensure fumes from burner where vented out from the factory and depending on how far this was it could be a problem.
  If you are getting high bacteria counts are all belts etc being removed dipped and  inaccessible areas being cleaned on a regular basis also do high level areas like girders etc have a cleaning schedule as bacteria could be spreading from these areas.

[AndrewR]

Yeah we are using a caustic cleaner and then sanitising afterwards. My arguement is exactly that if my team are cleaning and sanitising properly then there shouldn't be bacteria to atomised.

However the powers that be have decided that pressure washers are bad. We are getting no results from lines but sometimes getting results on product.

I think I may look at suggesting replacing pressure with volume (as suggested) but I will have to explain the associated water costs and also the fact that we will definately need 2 more staff.

Thank you for your replies. 

[trevor perry]

have you suggested using a fogging machine after cleaning this would deal with any airbourne bacteria

[AndrewR]

I hadn't considered a fogging machine, are there any that would deal with a factory size environment? I'll have a look on Google but if you know of any that you could recommend that would be great.

Thanks again.

[BDCS]

Do your swob tests actually show this ? I used to work in a soft drinks factory and most of the deep cleans were started with a Johnson Diversy foam which was applied and allowed to dwell. Cip's were also done after cleaning on the fillers which was a caustic followed by chlorine to sanitise. What foods are you processing ?

[trevor perry]

I hadn't considered a fogging machine, are there any that would deal with a factory size environment? I'll have a look on Google but if you know of any that you could recommend that would be great.

Thanks again.

I cant remember the make we used but we would set two up to run for about an hour and this covered a very large factory. Do you have an hours downtime to run foggers as ideally factory should be clear of people when working, we used to fogg just once a week on a sunday when production and cleaning was finished. what sort of food processing plant are you cleaning

[BDCS]

If I remember correctly the swobs only actually show ppm on the surface but the swobs have to show an increase in ppm when grown to show actual bacteria. The foam was used to take the dirt to drain rather than allow it to be airbourne and was acidic product. The soft drinks industry was considered low risk and any product with a high juice content was injected with Velcorin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_dicarbonate

[Jamie Pearson]

Dry steam? We have sold these systems to a number of food prep businesses.

[trevor perry]

Dry steam? We have sold these systems to a number of food prep businesses.

for some applications dry steam is fine but when we tested them on meat cutting blocks the bacteria actually increased I personally put this down to bacteria being freed from the cuts in the blocks and rising to the surface, on stainless steel dry steam was fine but very slow compared with power washing