Hygienic standards are a main concern in dairies. Some of the most important cleaning tasks are those related to the washing of closed equipment where Cleaning In Place (CIP) systems are of common use.


CIP are characterized by automatic cleaning programs based on a succession of several solutions of water, cleaning chemicals and disinfection agents that are discharged together with large amounts of water to rinse out residual chemicals.

So health and environmental concerns are supporting the need for alternative sanitation technologies. This project deals with the first industrial application of an ozone based CIP system and its validation in technical and economic terms at industrial level to boost its wide implementation in dairy industry.

The partnership is composed of ainia as coordinator of the project, a dairy industry (ESNELAT), an expert on ozone engineering (ITT water&wastewater) and an expert on CIP systems (Instalaciones Grau). The technical tasks scheduled include an on site environmental and hygienic diagnosis, design and retrofitting of the existing CIP system into ozone based CIP and monitoring and validation of the ozone based cip system at industrial scale.