Pallet Washing Automation
Effective washing and sanitation systems are critical to ensuring pharmaceutical products are safe for use, especially for high-volume applications where time is of the essence. That’s why we installed a fully automated solution for this client.
The Challenge
Our client, a leading pharmaceutical manufacturer, wanted a simple way to wash, rinse and sanitize pallets with zero human intervention or cross-contamination. As an early adopter of using plastic pallets internally, this pharmaceutical company would bring its product into the facility on wood pallets and transfer it to plastic ones for in house use. The plastic inhouse pallets were used to store bagged ingredients, drums of chemicals, vial, empty bottles and other packaging supplies to manufacture and package medicines and pharmaceuticals. However, some of the raw materials could be be stored for extended periods of time, resulting in the lagging movement of some pallets through the plant. As a result, these pallets would accumulate warehouse dust during the long intervals between uses.
The company had already washed these pallets before use as part of their hygiene program. They had a wet room where they would manually spray them off with a hose to remove the dust. Predictably, this process was slow and inefficient, which is why they came to us.
While they had considered standalone manual machines, the challenge there was that these manual machines could be labor intensive, lacked high pressure nozzles and didn’t allow them to recirculate water and sanitize the pallets after washing.
Our Solution
To provide the best automated washing system for their facility, we had to make several important considerations. For example, we had to determine the level of dryness we needed to achieve with the pallet.
To solve this facility issue, a room was constructed just for washing pallets, and an automated guided vehicle (AGV) would present the dirty pallets onto the conveyor leading into the washing system. To use it, the AGV would pick up stack of 10 pallets from a station in the plants and deposit onto the infeed conveyor section, which travels down the line and de-stacks pallets one by one, tipping them on their edge so they can travel horizontally into the washer.
Once the pallet is in the washer, a series of pressurized jets removes any dust and debris that has collected on the pallet during storage. The pallet then travels on the conveyor to the next area for rinsing and sanitizing before moving on to the dryer. After drying, clean pallets are restacked and picked up by the AGV. We also integrated high-speed doors into the system to better separate the wet and dry areas.
Another important consideration for this project was heating and recirculating the water used to wash the pallets. We included a built-in filtration system to remove any debris that falls from the pallets during the washing process, and utilized in plant steam to heat and maintain the hot water temperature making the water safe to recirculate.
Operators can slow the conveyors or speed them up to match the level of cleaning needed for each pallet, which was another important consideration we had to make. With these conveyors, they can wash and dry 100 pallets an hour at maximum speed.
Learn More About Semi-Automatic Solutions From Cherry’s
We offer fully automatic and semi-automatic pallet washing systems that meet stringent food, pharmaceutical and chemical industry standards. Review our selection of pallet washers and pallet dryers online to learn more about our products.
Want more information about custom pallet washing solutions? Feel free to contact us online or call us at 800-350-0011 with any questions you have. A customer representative will provide you with the information you need.