Diaphragm pumps in food testing equipment help make food safe

Food testing equipment is critical in the food industry to ensure products meet safety standards and quality expectations. The testing involves the analysis of various components and their proportions in food products to detect contaminants, verify nutritional content, and ensure overall product integrity. Diaphragm pumps play a vital role in these food testing systems, providing the precision and reliability required for accurate analysis.

Food testing is essential for several reasons. It helps identify contaminants, ensuring that food products are safe for consumption. It also verifies that nutrition labels are accurate, which is crucial for consumers who rely on this information for dietary choices. Additionally, food testing supports regulatory compliance, helping manufacturers meet industry standards and avoid legal issues. For these reasons, the food industry relies on testing equipment like analysers that ensure product quality standards are always met.

Keeping dairy products safe

In the dairy industry, food testing equipment is crucial for determining the quality of milk and other products. Diaphragm pumps are often used in instruments that analyse fat content, protein levels, water content and bacterial levels in milk. Large milk analysers use diaphragm pumps to maintain a specific vacuum level in a container, ensuring reliable waste removal and accurate analysis.

Smaller milk analysers use pumps to build up pressure and transfer milk and reagents through sensors, enabling precise measurements of various components. Depending on the pressure level needed, this task is also performed by swing piston pumps.

Ensuring wine does not go bad

Testing is essential to ensure the quality and consistency of wine. Diaphragm pumps are used in wine analysers to determine the sulphur content and other components in wine. Having the right amount of sulphur is critical for the wine's shelf life and the consumers' well-being. Wine with too little sulphur would spoil quickly, and wine with too much sulphur could cause headaches or other symptoms as well as a bad taste.

Pumps used in wine applications need to handle precise gas flow and manage both gas and liquid, including reagents and detergents, ensuring that the analysis is accurate and reliable.

The advantages of diaphragm pump technology

Diaphragm pumps are the preferred choice for food testing equipment due to their numerous benefits. They are self-priming, chemically inert, reliable and oil-free, which means they do not contaminate the samples and when used as liquid pumps, they can start without needing to be filled with liquid.

In addition to transferring media in an extremely clean way, they are also easy to clean. Their versatility allows them to handle both gases and liquids, making them ideal for various testing applications. Additionally, their compact design and low maintenance requirements make them easy to integrate into different instruments, while their ability to operate under both pressure and vacuum conditions ensures consistent performance.

Customisation for specific applications

To meet the unique requirements of food testing equipment, several customisations can be made to KNF pumps. For example, customers can choose from a variety of different motor options including higher protection classes like IP 54 and the latest BLDC technology for advanced controllability, precision and flexible parameterisation.

To save space and reduce system complexity, the pump heads can be turned, and the electrical and hydraulic or pneumatic connections can be customised to eliminate the need for adapters. The pump material can also be optimised to make the pump compatible with almost all chemicals.

To meet the high standards of food testing equipment manufacturers, all KNF pumps are tested before shipping. If required, the pumps can be tested following customer specifications.