Modulfill – state-of-the art filling technology for soft drinks producers

The Dutch soft drinks producer Vrumona B.V. Frisdrankenindustrie in Bunnik near Utrecht successfully commissioned a new PET line from Krones rated at 24,000 containers an hour early in 2006. The outstanding innovation in this line is the volumetic Modulfill filler, a first in the soft drinks sector, which is the obvious choice for bottling still and carbonated soft drinks and mineral waters in PET.

The Modulfill excels with a variety of filling technology innovations:

• The no-front-table drive concept implemented in the Modulfill filler makes for very good access to the machine, thus rendering it easy to clean. 
• Thanks to the free-standing Monotec transfer starwheels, surface areas have been minimised, with the enclosed drives contributing their part towards enhanced microbiological safety. 
• The sealer interfaces permit any desired expansion of an existing line, to include new sealer modules. 
• The single-channel rinser Moduljet has been conceived for optimum hygiene-friendliness and visually matched to the Modulfill filler. It is linked to the filler via Monotec transfer starwheels. 
• The bottle is transferred to the filler by the neck-handling starwheel, always staying at the same level, and the valve descends onto it. 
• In the Modulfill, control is handled at the filling valve level.

All pneumatic control functions, together with the associated pneumatic valves and the electronics required, have been grouped together in one block per station which is located directly at the valve, with concomitant advantages in terms of consistently faster response times and a high degree of reproducibility for the filling accuracy, with simultaneously reduced air consumption, without any pneumatic tube connections. A perceptible reduction in the times needed for changing over to a different product was also achieved, from 60 to now 30 minutes, an aspect of special importance given the 15 to 20 product change-over routines a week in this line, run in three shifts.
The second Krones non-returnable-PET line at Vrumona has started operation in April 2007, once again with a Modulfill system.