GB1354872A - Apparatus for the sterile packing of food products and foodstuffs - Google Patents

Abstract

1354872 Apparatus for the sterile packing of food products H A MœLLER 22 March 1973 [23 March 1972] 13843/73 Heading B8C In an apparatus for the sterile packing of food products and luxury food stuffs in beaker-shaped receptacles 19 which comprises a large-volume sterile chamber 21 and a conveyer chain 16 which carries rows of receptacles successively past a metering filling station 10, a lid-applying station 12, a lid-sealing station 13, a discharge device 14, a take-out conveyer 17, a receptacle magazine 18, and a sterile medium spraying device 23, pipes in a nozzle pipe-conducting system 24 extends beneath the entire lower run of each conveyer chain row and the conducting system is adapted to be selectively charged with a sterile medium, or with sterile drying air. The magazine 18 is spaced upstream from the filling station 10 by a distance equal to at least half the length of the conveyer chain, and the chamber 21 is subdivided, at least over partial lengths of its upper run, and over the regions of the filling, lid applying, and sealing stations with a screen 28 having its own sterile air-supply, system 30, and an outlet pipe 29. The bottom of the chamber 31 is provided with a preferably movable trough 26 having an outlet pipe 27 and each pipe 24, is provided, adjacent the spraying range of the spray 23, with a sheath 25, Fig. 3, so that, when the receptacles have left the sheathed region they pass into the effective range of the nozzle pipes 24 through which drying air is supplied. The pipe system may also be employed to charge the chamber 21 with sterile fluid either before, or during, operation. The lid-applying station 12 includes a multi-arm suction device which conducts each lid, during a stand-still period of the machine, in front of a sterile liquid emitter 33. All of the driving mechanisms for the machine are located outside the chamber 31. In a modification, Fig. 3 (not shown), plates (41, 42) beneath and above respectively the upper and lower runs of the chain (16) divide the chamber (21) into upper and lower duct chambers (21a, 21b). The plates (41, 42) may be joined by vertical walls (43) to form box-frame elements one of which may accommodate the idle run of the transport chain, and the upper surface (128) of the other serving as the screen 128.