Pigging Benefitting Sanitary and Hygienic Applications
Pigging technology has been around for some time. Although often associated just with oil and gas, pigging and liquid product recovery solutions help a wide range of other industries. This includes processing industries (including sanitary and hygienic applications) such as food, beverage, pet food, homecare, paints, coatings, personal care and many more.
Pigging systems use a specialist projectile (the pipeline pig) to recover product from pipelines that would otherwise go to waste. Although pigging offers benefits to a wide variety of sectors, industries and applications that process liquids, larger multiproduct and batch operation processing plants tend to have more to gain from pigging systems. However, generally pigging is a viable option for companies looking to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and increase their profits.
Here’s our latest infographic featuring seven reasons why you should consider implementing a pigging system .
Profitability and Return on Investment (ROI)
Companies that process liquids, whatever the product, are constantly looking for ways to increase profits, lower costs and improve their bottom lines. One of the most effective ways to do this is by recovering your product, rather than letting it go to waste.
Pigging recovers up to 99.5% of product from full process pipelines. Please note that few pigging systems (if any) can achieve 100% product recovery rates. This is due to design restrictions, for example on pig launcher or receiver locations. This means a small amount of product cannot be recovered. However, HPS pigging systems recover the majority of product, which is a major source of savings. Using our pigging system savings calculator you can find out how much product you are likely to recover by pigging.
There are also many other indirect savings such as lower waste handling and disposal costs, faster changeovers, less energy usage and so on.
Reduction of Product Waste
Instead of sending the residual product to waste, pigging saves it. It’s estimated that a plant processing 500,000 gallons can lose around 3% or 15,000 gallons, a day (and sometimes even more), due to changeovers and cleaning.
In most processing plants, there are lots of product transfer pipelines which are left full of residual product at the end of transfer batches. So, there’s a lot of product for the pig to recover, which increases yield significantly.
Reducing waste not only impacts a company’s bottom line (reduced waste means lower costs) but it helps the environment through the conservation of natural resources and reduced levels of greenhouse gases.
It’s important to note that waste is not just the volume of product lost. Waste also includes the fluid used to evacuate the product and the energy used in making this happen. The waste will also need to be treated responsibly. The cost associated with the removal of waste will also include chemicals, transport, power, and human resources.
Improved Environmental Sustainability
While efficient product recovery is a key driver to most pigging system projects, another significant benefit of pigging is that it can help companies towards their environmental sustainability goals.
In recent years, sustainability has become rooted in how liquid processing companies operate. HPS pigging systems are proven to cut waste, minimise water use, lower the use of cleaning fluids and other chemicals. They also lower the costs and resources associated with waste disposal and transportation. So, by having an HPS pigging system, you’re improving your company’s environmental sustainability, as well as efficiency and productivity. Here’s more about how pigging helps the environment.
Efficiency Improvements
Today, companies that process liquids must contend with rising raw material costs and increasing competition. At the same time, consumers now demand a diverse range of products, which challenges manufacturing plants to produce a broad number of Stock Keeping Units (SKUs).
Producing products that require many different ingredients and format changes means more frequent changeovers and even-shorter production runs. And the more changeovers there are, the more downtime there is as well as more product losses and cleaning cycles which means a decline in productivity and efficiency.
Pigging is one of the most effective ways to improve operational efficiency. This is through higher yields, increased capacity, faster changeovers, reduced flushing and chemical washouts, less waste and so on.
Fierce Competition
In the process industries, especially the food and beverage industry, companies are fiercely competing with each other for growth, market share, and profit.
So, to stay ahead of the competition and maintain a foothold in the market, liquid processing companies are turning to technologies such as pigging that improve their production processes, keep downtime to a minimum and increase productivity and profitability.
Manufacturers are also seeking flexible technologies such as pigging to help cope with rising ingredient costs, stringent regulations, food safety concerns, and ever-changing consumer tastes.
Companies that fail to embrace new processing equipment and technologies will fall behind competitors who choose to embrace them.
Water Conservation
Many liquid processing companies depend heavily on water for their manufacturing processes. Not only is it used as an ingredient, but it’s used for cleaning and rinsing plant equipment and preventing bacteria build-up. However, water scarcity is a serious concern throughout the world.
Because water is a finite resource that needs to be sustained, the costs associated with the consumption and discharge of water are predicted to rise. That’s why it’s important that manufacturers implement water conservation measures.
Pigging can help manufacturers reduce water usage and meet their conservation efforts. This is by reducing water flushing between product transfers and batch changeovers, improving control and efficiency of the CIP process and increasing water efficiency by re-using and recycling rinse water. And because pigging minimises water usage, this reduces the amount of wastewater treatment costs.
Your Working Life Will Be Easier
Pigging solves some of your most complex and critical liquid processing challenges. An HPS pigging solution will increase yields, reduce waste, speed up changeovers, minimise contamination risks and so on.
At the same, time, with a pigging solution, you’ll easily be able to produce multiple small batches with little downtime. Cleaning will be much easier, and they’ll be less stress. In this way, pigging will make your working life easier.
Bring the Benefits of Pigging to Your Organisation
We hope you find our latest infographic informative. If you have any questions, feedback or any suggestions for future infographics, then please let us know.
For more information on the why you should use pigging, visit our page on the benefits of pigging.