It is an in-continuous overpressure sterilizer for the thermal stabilization of foodstuff canned in tin cans. The thermal cycle is subdivided into three sections:

• overpressure heating, typically 115°C at 0.5 bar;
• overpressure holder/pre-cooling at 0.5 bar;
• cooling at atmospheric pressure.

The cans conveying system inside the sterilizer sections consists of a series of bars handled by two parallel chain conveyors. The special bar profile allows containing the can and making it rotate, thus ensuring an optimum thermal exchange. According to the products and customer’s requirements, the plant can be configured as “steady can” or “rotary can”. The adopted thermal exchange system – both for the hot and cool part – is based on the forced recirculation of water. The hydraulic systems consist of a series of pump, filter, heat exchanger and spraying nozzles. The remarkable energy saving, which is the key feature of this plant, is censure by the following solutions:

• heat dissipation minimized thanks to the hydrostatic column system;
• full recovery of the steam condensate thanks to the indirect Exchange of steam/water and water/product;

• holder/pre-cooling section where the heat of the outgoing cans is yielded to the incoming cans.

Thanks to the robotized loading and unloading system, which controls the can infeed and outfeed from the plant, all the format change-over operations can be performed without stopping the plant and calling for mechanical interventions. The electrical panel completes the plant with a section dedicated to power made up of a series of inverter controls for all the motors present and one dedicated to the programmable logic device and operator’s interface.