Surfaces with reduced Product Adherence

The cleaning and sterilisation of processing and packaging machines are time and resources consuming.

In some areas of

• Biochemistry
• Microbiology
• Materials science
• Processing technology

there are basically new solutions to reduce the contamination of surfaces as well as to avoid contamination.

In 2003 tests to analyse the attachment of microorganism on technical surfaces were carried out. As test surfaces different “easy to clean” surfaces and stainless steel were chosen. For the detection of the surface attached microorganism the method of biomonitoring was used. In result of the tests a tendentious less attachment of E.coli TG1 microorganism on “easy to clean” surfaces was found.

In food industry the product adherence on surfaces is the major contamination reason. Within this project the product adherence is the focus of testing. The results of these tests are going to be compared with the results of the microorganism tests. Thereby we want to verify, if the results could be generalised.

Hence the following project steps are to be carried out:

IVLV financed:

• Definition of a dusty and a liquid test contamination
• Inquiry for methods to determine the soiling tendency of a surfaces with dusty particles
• Preliminary tests with liquid contamination
• Working out of an application for an AiF project

AiF financed:

• Further investigations to the attachment of contaminations on surfaces
• Benchmarking of different methods (surface coatings) under the aspect of practicability in food industry
• Implementation of single surface coatings in test rig
• Work out of proposals and hints for other applications