PTI Pacific

The development of this 1300 Series Crossflow Killing machine is aimed at the significant reduction in plastic consumable landfill, increasing of filtered wine quality, reduction in wine losses (waste) plus a total reduction in winery energy consumption.  The 1300 Series machine offers significant quality increases by eliminating wine recirculation which is common with conventional crossflow filtration. Wine crossflows continuously recirculate and shear wine allowing a slow passage of wine through the hollow-fibre or spiral wound membrane media and is fixed at 0.22 or occasionally 0.45um porosity. The novel 1300 Series Machine instead takes conventional dead-end filtration techniques, utilising a single high-surface area filter cartridge to allow very high volumes of wine through at low pressures and no recirculation. When the filter requires self-cleaning, all wine is pushed through the system and a water-backwash cycle occurs. As a result, there is no wine losses and importantly there is no wine recirculation and additional heat energy transferred.  Traditional cartridge or lenticular filters are designed as a single-use disposable item. The 1300 Series utilises an unique polypropylene filter that can be repeatedly used for up to 3 years after installation resulting in an huge reduction in un-recyclable plastic landfill. Further, with the pump configuration, wineries can reduce their energy consumption by an average of 68% whilst achieving the quality benefits and zero oxygen pickup.  The traditional operation of the machine is that it will operate with a low RPM positive displacement feed pump until a maximum of 0.8 bar g of differential pressure is achieved. One single cartridge has the equivalent surface area of 24 x 30-inch pleated cartridges which means on average a backwash cycle will occur 1-2 times per 8hr shift. When a backwash cycle is initiated, all wine is purged from the system with nitrogen gas (no wine loss or concentration) and a water backwash/regeneration cycle starts. This runs for approximately 5mins per cycle meaning a total production downtime of 10 mins per 8 hr shift.  Our very first installation at Stella Bella Wines has had the same single cartridge for 2 years and 9 months and going strong.