The Positive Environmental Impact of Product Recovery
Hygienic or Sanitary Pigging is a highly effective method of cleaning pipes and recovering product in liquid processing systems. It’s used in a wide variety of different industries and for many different products: for example food and drink, paint, household goods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, personal care products and many more.
Wide Variety of Benefits
Businesses implement pigging systems for a wide variety of reasons. As well as cleaning pipelines, HPS pigs will typically recover up to 99.5% of product. This recovered product, which would otherwise go to waste, is nearly always in a useable condition. This means businesses using pigging can sell the product, saving money and increasing profits right from the start. Pigging also has a number of other benefits, such as increased process efficiency through faster changeover times, lower labour costs and reductions in downtime.
When HPS first started back in 1995, the most common reasons businesses gave for deploying pigging systems were based on efficiency and productivity gains. However, as environmental awareness has increased, and environmental responsibility risen on the agenda of most manufacturers, many organisations now implement pigging systems to lower their carbon footprint and improve their environmental credentials. What’s more, they are also increasing profits at the same time. So, with hygienic pigging, increased profits and improved environmental credentials are not mutually exclusive.
Reducing Cleaning Agent and Water Use
Modern pipeline cleaning technology, depending on the application, uses a lot of water and cleaning agents. Many of these cleaning agents are potentially harmful, posing safety risks to both people and the environment. Chemicals commonly used in the cleaning process include chlorine dioxide, chlorine gas, hypochlorites (potassium, sodium and calcium) and peracetic acid among others. While being effective sanitizers, they are all corrosive (some extremely) and require robust safety procedures. So by reducing the amounts of cleaning agents used, pigging improves safety and reduces environmental risks. At the same, recycling and disposing of waste product is expensive, needs transport, uses resources and energy. So, by reducing the use of cleaning agents, using less water, and lowering the amount of product going to waste, pigging systems have a positive environmental impact.
This infographic illustrates some of the ways in which pigging helps the environment:
For more information about Hygienic or Sanitary Pigging systems, please contact HPS.