COSMETICS BUSINESS LIVE
ECOLAB
Cleaning & d isinfecting manufacturing equipment
effectively Removing cosmetics residues with less time, water & energy
Speaker Thomas Altmann I
would like to call attention to the cleaning and disinfection that we do with manufacturing equipment in the cosmetics industry. Here we see removing cosmetic residues is sometimes done in a way that is not very effective. We have intensive market
competition, which means very often you have to increase productivity and even the production capacity and the agility of production in cosmetics. So, when the customer is making a white cream, such as a sun lotion, and wants to afterwards make a foundation, they have to have a programme in place to clean it right the first time, and which makes it possible to be very agile also on your production side. The main issue is to cut costs and to be competitive. Overall, I want to talk about the optimisation of not only the cleaning but also the disinfection procedures. We have three goals: we want to increase the production capacity. But sometimes there are long downtimes for cleaning. Sometimes, unexpectedly, when the operator cleans equipment in accordance with a certain programme, they realise it’s not clean and they have to re-clean it. So they’re in the position where they say ‘oh, what do I do?’ and very often they do exactly the same cleaning they have done before, even if they have seen it was not working. So this is something we really try to avoid via better production capacity planning. Then, if you do a proper clean, you can get this guarantee that you can start the next batch after cleaning. Secondly, we want to protect the operators, because we see manual cleaning using high alkaline and high acid products, or they are dealing with temperatures where the goggles get blind very quickly, because they have high-melting waxes they want to clean. So these kinds of situations are what we also want to look at and maybe provide a solution for.
34 December 2022
The third one is cost reduction and the sustainability approach. For example, the high consumption of water, energy and labour.
WHY CARE ABOUT CLEANING? So, why do we care about cleaning? Because the guidelines tell us, the cosmetic GMP, that cleaning is eliminating the visible dirt, so the minimum requirement for good manufacturing practice is that you start off the next batch with visually clean equipment.
It even outlines that cleaning and sanitisation should be performed at appropriate intervals. That also means you have to understand how often you have to do that: can I prepare three batches of the same product subsequently after each, without a water rinse in between, or do I need a water rinse, or do I have to do a full clean? Because I want to get information about the process that gives me the best product quality. If we look at the different points we have to consider for cleaning, it’s what people call TACT or the Sinner Circle. We have temperature, we have the action, the chemical concentration and we have the time for cleaning. So, with cleaning, normally, there is end of production, which can have an influence on the cleanability of a product, then sometimes you make a pre-rinse, a detergent cleaning and then sanitisation or disinfection. At the end you have a ‘clean hold time’ and you should start production. With the TIME parameters you can really play and have the ability to question things, because this is what people are doing too little of at the moment. They are saying, ‘I’ve been cleaning this mixer for 20 years like that at 80°C’, because they think high temperatures are good for cleaning. Sometimes this is true, if we talk about waxy or oily soils, but some
product residues might be better removed using lower temperatures. Usually, we start with a grouping strategy. We look at the different formulation types existing on site and we try to identify what is the worst case product - maybe based on the highest content of titanium dioxide with iron oxides inside - and then what in this worst case scenario would be a complete cleaning process. Then we would also use this effective cleaning process to clean easier products. Typical problems that we see are high mineral loads, waxy soils, silicones, or even over-the-counter drug ingredients, like titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, fluorides, etc.
Also, if you get new ingredients on site, you have to have an idea if these are more critical for cleaning, or are easier to clean. This is what Ecolab usually assists with, first of all to identify what the cleanability is overall, so what cleaning agent needs to be used.
If there are new ingredients, we run lab trials. We then identify these worst cases and try to make the cleaning as effective as possible. We have different methods that should help us to identify ‘is it easy to clean, is it medium to clean, or really hard to clean?’ and we are always sharing these kinds of laboratory cleaning trials and information to our customers, to get to a point where they say ‘oh, I have to use a certain cleaning regime to be sure that this is the most effective for what I have on site’
cosmeticsbusiness.com
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