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Abstract
An electrical resistance method, which has the potential to measure the extent of soft material fouling such as milk fouling on the
surface of process equipment in situ and in real time, is described. An experimental fouling unit with the appropriate attachments
has been devised and used to monitor the fouling build-up using the electrical resistance method. Reconstituted skim milks with
solid contents of 1030 wt.% were used to produce milk foulings, and these milk foulings were cleaned using a cleaning solution with
0.5 wt.% NaOH. Using the fouling unit, it was possible to measure the thermal resistance (essentially measuring heat ux) and
electrical resistance simultaneously. As a result, the relationship between the electrical resistance and the thermal resistance during
both fouling build-ups and cleaning processes was established. It has been shown that this technique is eective for measuring the
extent of fouling, and it has the potential to be modied further so that it can be adopted in real process industries.
2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tuladhar et al., 2000), and electrical conductivity deposition of say less than 0.1 or 0.2 mm (Troung,
method (Bott, 1996; Diehl & Van Gelder, 1990; Gale & 2001).
Griths, 1995). An optimal monitoring method would indicate the
The commercially available heat ux sensors have in location and extent of the deposit accurately. In indus-
fact been applied to the dairy industry in New Zealand, try, this information must be acquired on-line, in situ,
which have been shown to be a reasonably reliable tool non-destructively, in real time reproducibly and auto-
for the operators to make rational decisions upon the matically. The devices should be robust, cheap, and easy
termination of a production run and the degree of to use. As a development towards achieving such a goal,
cleanness of their plant (Troung, 2001). Gale developed this paper describes a recently developed apparatus,
a pneumatic gauging technique to measure the thickness which measures the electrical conductivity changes
of leaf tissue (Gale & Griths, 1995). With this method, across a ow channel during both the fouling build-up
air at a constant pressure discharges through a nozzle and cleaning process. The principle of such an apparatus
in close proximity to the surface being examined; as has been demonstrated successfully in this work. How-
the nozzle approaches the surface, the pressure prole in ever, the practical aspects of the apparatus have to be
the nozzle apparatus is modied by the presence of the improved in future work.
surface and this can be used to infer its distance from
the nozzle. The pressure change is indicated by the
formation of a stream of bubbles in a liquid. The 2. Experimental
thickness of a coating on the surface is then determined
by dierence, given the location of the clean surface. The current system has adopted two parallel stainless
Recently, the pneumatic gauging technique was im- steel electrodes (50 110 mm, and 10 mm apart) to
proved by Tuladhar et al. (2000) for detecting a whey measure the electrical resistance of the fouling layer and
protein deposit layer. In the new system, the process the liquid between the electrodes. The thermal resistance
liquid is sucked into a nozzle presented to the surface was also measured at the same time on the fouling side
region to be gauged. The technique has been shown to of the test section in order to obtain a realistic bench-
be very successful for studying the fouling and cleaning mark of the electric resistance measurement for fouling
kinetics on a laboratory scale (Fryer, 1997). For this (or cleaning) detection. The approach allowed the
technique, the deposition must be suciently rigid to measurement process to be automated for real time
resist signicant deformation by impingement of the sampling. A photograph and a schematic diagram of the
gauging uid. The gauge may sometimes distort a soft fouling apparatus are shown in Fig. 1. The system was
deposit due to either the impinging jets or the suction used to detect milk fouling under accelerated condi-
streams. tions, which were achieved by recycling the reconstituted
An automatic system was devised to measure di- milk and setting a relatively high wall temperature. The
mensions of a stationary single soft sample (Diehl & measurement system consisted of two sub-systems: one
Van Gelder, 1990). Size measurement was governed by to detect the fouling process through measuring the
the electrical conductivity of the material to be mea- electrical resistance and the other to detect the fouling
sured. The measurement system consisted of two sub- process through measuring the thermal resistance of the
systems: one to detect specimen contact and the other to fouling as illustrated in Fig. 2. Essentially, the system
determine the specimen dimension. Contact between the comprised the ow system, the test section, the reference
metal sensor and the specimen acted like a switch, which electrode, the electrical heating system, and the data
closed the circuit. This technique turns out to be quite acquisition system.
relevant to the current study. Based on the same prin- The setup for producing fouling and subsequent
ciple, Gale improved Diehls system and developed a cleaning process mimicked a typical heat exchanger
micrometer (Gale, 1995). When the electrical contact is system. Before the uid entered the test section, there
established with the sample surface, further squeezing was a 1.44-m-long ow channel before the test section to
is not necessary. For a single stationary sample, this ensure that a well-developed laminar ow was estab-
approach is simple, reliable and easy-to-use. It may not lished (Fig. 1). The ow system consisted of a milk
be accurate when the soft layer contains air bubbles as heating tank (60 l), two 30-l cleaning solution storage
the sensor has to contact the surface to be measured. tanks (one for the alkaline and the other for the acid
The system is not suitable for on-line or in situ mea- solution), two pumps, two ow rotameters, a ow
surement. channel made of a stainless steel (fouling surface), and
Milk fouling at low processing temperatures, is soft Perspex sheets.
and fragile and thus can only be monitored conve- The sample uid was preheated to 60 C in the tank
niently if non-touching sensors are used. Heat ux sen- by an electric coil heater (PID + fuzzy logic control)
sors are appropriate from this viewpoint but they are before entering the test cell. A constant fouling surface
not sensitive enough to pick up small thickness of a milk temperature was maintained by adjusting the power
X.D. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 61 (2004) 181189 183
process.
The general steps of the experiments are summarized 1.5E-03
below:
Thermal resistance
1.0E-03
face. 0.0035
0.002
(v) At the end of each fouling run, switch o the power
of the heater. Let the fouling liquid run several 0.0015
the fouling surface and the bulk liquid is less than 0.0005
Run 1
Run 2
3 C (otherwise, water will be removed from the
0
fouling deposit) and then switch o the pump. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
(vi) Take the fouling sample from the surface if neces- (b) Electrical resistance RE ()
sary for analysis.
Fig. 3. Reproducibility tests.
8 4.0E-03
RF (m2.kW-1)
88
88C 3.5E-03
7 96C
96C 2
y = -0.001x + 0.0044x 115C
RE()
3.0E-03 2
6 115C R = 0.9886
Thermal resistance
2.0E-03
4
1.5E-03
2
y = -1E-06x + 0.0003x
3 2
1.0E-03 R = 0.9947
2 5.0E-04
1 0.0E+00
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0 Electrical resistance R ()
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 E
Fouling time (min)
Fig. 6. Comparison of the three fouling trials at dierent surface.
Fig. 4. Typical change of electrical resistance of the fouling with time
using 10 wt.% skim milk, velocity 0.05 m s1 , Tbulk 62 C: (a)
general overview, (b) logarithmic view to highlight the initial period. times during fouling build-ups at various surface tem-
peratures (88, 96, and 115 C) are shown in Figs. 79.
The photo in Fig. 7, taken 40 min after starting up
3.0E-03
the system shows the induction of the fouling process.
R F (m2.kW-1)
2.5E-03
At this stage, the surface was still reasonably clear and
2.0E-03
1.5E-03
Thermal resistance
1.0E-03
88C
5.0E-04 96C
115C
0.0E+00
02 04 06 08 0 100 120 140 160 180 200 220
RF aRE bR2E 1
from the higher temperature case had even more brown 3.5
under-layers, which were probably caused by extensive Electrical resistance
Electrical resistance RE ()
thickness at the inlet and outlet was about 0.8 and 1.2 0.5
mm, respectively after 100 min, and about 1.5 and 2.5 0
mm, respectively after 200 min. The formation of non- 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0
80 90 100 110 120
uniform fouling layers is due to the fact that the tem- Time (second)
perature of the milk close to the outlet is higher than Fig. 11. The change in electrical resistance with time, skim milk fouling
that close to the inlet as a result of the heating by the test layer occurring at Ts 96 C, d 1 mm, cleaning solution 0.5 wt.%
plate. NaOH, velocity 0.133 m s1 , Tsolution 45 C, DT 10 C.
X.D. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 61 (2004) 181189 187
4 0.0045
Cleaning effect
)
0.004
-1
3.5
0.0035
3
Electrical 0.003
resistance NaOH penetration
2.5
decreases
due to NaOH 0.0025
2 penetration
0.002
1.5
0.0015
1
0.001
0.5 0.0005
0 0
05 0 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
Time (min) Electrical resistance R
E
()
Fig. 12. The change in electrical resistance with time, fouling layer Fig. 14. Cleaning process, the relationship between electrical resistance
occurring at Ts 96 C, d 1 mm, cleaning solution 0.5 wt.% NaOH, and thermal resistance, fouling layer occurring at Ts 96 C, d 1
velocity 0.133 m s1 , Tsolution 45 C, DT 10 C. mm, cleaning solution 0.5 wt.% NaOH, velocity 0.133 m s1 ,
Tsolution 45 C, DT 10 C.
sistance was observed once the system was lled with the
cleaning solution, suggesting that this is due to the in- resistance was observed even though the removal of the
troduction of electrolytes. deposit has not started. This is indicated by a large re-
Fig. 12 shows the trend that combines both the duction in the electrical resistance (RE ) while almost no
fouling and cleaning process. The rst six data points of change in the thermal resistance was recorded (see Fig.
the cleaning process in Fig. 12 correspond to the pene- 14). This shows that the NaOH penetration into the
tration of NaOH during the rst six seconds. When the deposit was very fast and it can not be the limiting step
cell was initially lled with NaOH, there was an ap- for the cleaning process.
parently abrupt drop in the electric resistance (from The electrical resistance as a function of time for the
3.53 to 1.32 X). This drop was expected, because the foulant (about 2-mm thick) generated at a surface
NaOH solution is a strong conductive medium. If the temperature of 115 C during the cleaning process is
cleaning solution penetrates into the foulant, it would shown in Fig. 15. The electrical resistance decreased
substantially reduce the electrical resistance value. from 7.43 to 5.86 X during the rst 7 s of the cleaning
The thermal resistance as a function of time during process. Fig. 16 shows both the fouling build-up and the
the fouling build-up and the cleaning process is shown in cleaning process in terms of thermal resistance. Similar
Fig. 13. As can be seen from Fig. 13, a sharp drop in the trends were observed as those in Figs. 12 and 13. The
thermal resistance was not observed during the cleaning drop in the electrical resistance for the 2-mm thick fo-
stage. The relationship between the electrical resistance ulant (see Fig. 15) layer was not very abrupt compared
and the thermal resistance for the cleaning process is to that for 1-mm thick foulant (see Fig. 12). This is re-
illustrated in Fig. 14. The abrupt drop in the electrical ected graphically in Fig. 17. The reduction in the
electrical resistance at a constant thermal resistance for
0.004
8
0.0035 Fouling Cleaning
Thermal resistance RF (m 2W-1)
7 Electrical
0.003 reduction due to
Electrical resistance RE ()
6 NaOH penetration
0.0025
5 Actual cleaning
starts
0.002
4
0.0015
3
0.001
2
0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130
Time (min) Time (second)
Fig. 13. The change in thermal resistance with time, skim milk fouling Fig. 15. The change in electrical resistance with time, fouling layer
layer occurring at Ts 96 C, d 1 mm, cleaning solution 0.5 wt.% occurring at Ts 115 C, d 2 mm, cleaning solution 0.5 wt.%
NaOH, velocity 0.133 m s1 , Tsolution 45 C, DT 10 C. NaOH, velocity 0.133 m s1 , Tsolution 45 C, DT 10 C.
188 X.D. Chen et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 61 (2004) 181189
0.004 References
Thermal resistance RF (m2.kW-1)
0.0035
Cleaning
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