bottle cleaning

[whiskeytango]

Does anyone out there use a blast of compressed air to get dust and other small particles out of the bottles prior to filling?  If so what kind of filter do you run on your compressed air to keep out any oil or other possible residue from the compressor? 

[richard1]

Two things, your compressor needs to be of screw oil free type and with respect to filters they need to be multi stage coalescers where you aim for oil and particle removal.

[Skaalvenn]

7 hours ago, richard1 said:

Two things, your compressor needs to be of screw oil free type and with respect to filters they need to be multi stage coalescers where you aim for oil and particle removal.

Any reason a traditional piston compressor wouldn’t work? We have our compressor with a belt guard aftercooler and auto drain, that gets most of the water out. Outside the compressor is a coalescing filter, a refrigerated air drier, and then a water drop and another coalescing filter at each machine.

the coalescing at the compressor has needed to be emptied three times in 60 hours of run time, I don’t even bother having the refrigerated dryer drain to a container because there’s so little moisture at that stage, and I haven’t seen a drop at any of the tool hookups.  Granted, half of the run time has been during cold winter, but it has been a very humid summer.

We are looking at getting an automated bottle filler with air rinser, so that’s why I wonder why you say it needs to be a screw compressor.

 

thanks

[richard1]

Piston compressors are bad news with respect to oil carry over.  Coalescing filters do a sort of ok job here but not perfect.   I have lost a lot of pneumatic solenoid valves due to oil even though coalescing filters are installed.  Now imagine if you are blowing the bottle out with air and you have an amount of oil to contend with.

[captnKB]

I prefer to rinse with spirit. tcw equipment makes a great bottle rinser 

[MichaelAtTCW]

Thanks @captnKB. I've deposited 500 rubles into your account.

We've made air spargers for years. Typically they're for displacing air in the bottles and introducing inert gas to minimize dissolved oxygen in the final product. More for beer & wine than for spirits, but some users have used them to blast out dust too.

What we've learned over the years is that compressed air doesn't work very well. Besides the potential for introducing more crud itself, compressed air mostly just kicks dust around. That's particularly true of bottles that are not shaped like a "standard" wine bottle. Compressed air just isn't very effective at dislodging particles. Some stuff is forced out, but most stays inside. Rinsing works much better. The rinser we make and sell is the MiniMax.

[daveflintstone]

I"ve used a Balston 3 stage sterile air filter with a standard oil-less big box compressor for years.  Very happy with the results.  Use the same filters before my tank air mixer.

[WaywardB]

Does anyone filter their air for general pneumatic pump use?