New glass filling system for alcoholic drinks

With its new Innofill Glass platform, KHS is heralding a new dawn of filling technology. The highlights of this high-performance system are hygienic design, increased line availability, cuts in media and energy consumption, and reduced servicing and maintenance costs.

The first KHS filling system designed for this platform was the computer-controlled Innofill Glass DRS-ZMS pressure filler for beer and soft drinks. Now the wine, sparkling wine and spirits trade is set to profit from the many positive aspects of Innofill Glass.

The features of this platform system are many and varied. In the machine variation for wine, sparkling wine, and spirits, these also include the use of modern, wear-free and lubrication-free components, bottle transfer without a front table, a lightweight tubular  ring bowl, media feed through hygienic pantograph joints, easy-mount, compact filling valves, especially fast, tool-free format part changeovers, space-saving compact valve manifolds, and a modular vacuum pump concept.

Parallel to the introduction of the Innofill Glass for the wine, sparkling wine, and spirits industry, with the optimized KHS DNRT filling system (pressure – normal pressure – computer-controlled – Trinox) KHS is launching two more new KHS filling systems to market. All fillers process bottles holding from 0.1 to 3 liters, and can output 10,000 to 72,000 glass bottles per hour.

These fillers all utilize KHS Trinox technology, which has now been further optimized and features infinitely variable fill level adjustment. The tube adjustment area is in a special sanitary room which is automatically rinsed and sterilized together with the rest of the filler. The process enables high-precision fill levels to be achieved with standard deviations of just one millimeter or less. This is a huge plus – especially for high-quality products such as wine, sparkling wine, and spirits. Another benefit lies in the fact that the Trinox system can keep to a precisely defined headspace, which means that where natural corks are used, the set distance between the beverage and the cork is always maintained.

Further innovation has equipped the filling valves with a new type of discharge system, which ensures that product can gently slide down the inner wall of the bottle with little foaming. Each filling valve also has a hygienic membrane seal and a return gas tube with no spreader elements protruding into the bottle.

The fillers can be monoblocked with up to three different closure systems as required. If very sensitive products are scheduled for bottling, such as non-alcoholic wine, alcohol-free mixed wine beverages, or non-alcoholic sparkling wine, ultraclean filling can be implemented. For this purpose the fillers can be connected up to a single-channel or two-channel rinser, which is precisely customized to requirements. If ultraclean filling is requested, the rinser/filler/capper or corker monoblock can be housed in a KHS sanitary room where only the bottle transfer areArisara Karbdecho