In recent years, more and more food factories have begun to consider building clean workshops in the inner packaging and other sections. Building clean workshops can effectively reduce the microbial contamination of the products produced, and effectively improve product quality and production efficiency.
01
What is a clean workshop?
A clean workshop is also called a dust-free workshop, a clean room, or a dust-free room. It refers to a specially designed room that removes pollutants such as microparticles, harmful air, and bacteria in the air within a certain space and controls the indoor temperature, cleanliness, indoor pressure, airflow speed and airflow distribution, noise vibration, lighting, and static electricity within a certain required range. That is, no matter how the external air conditions change, the indoor room can maintain the characteristics of cleanliness, temperature, humidity, and pressure that were originally set.
What is a 100,000-level clean workshop? In short, the number of particles with a diameter of ≥0.5μm per cubic meter of air in the workshop is no more than 3.52 million. The fewer particles in the air, the less dust and microorganisms there are, and the cleaner the air. The 100,000-level clean workshop also requires that the workshop be ventilated 15-19 times per hour, and the air purification time after full ventilation shall not exceed 40 minutes.
02
Division of food factory workshops
Food workshops can be roughly divided into three areas: general production area, quasi-clean area, and clean production area.
⊙ General production area (non-clean area): general raw materials, finished products, tool storage areas, packaging finished product transfer areas, and other areas with low risk of exposure of raw materials and finished products, such as outer packaging rooms, raw and auxiliary material warehouses, packaging material warehouses, outer packaging workshops, finished product warehouses, etc.
⊙ Quasi-clean area: the requirements are second, such as raw material processing, packaging material processing, packaging, buffer room (unpacking room), general production and processing room, non-ready-to-eat food inner packaging room and other areas where finished products are processed but not directly exposed.
⊙ Clean production working area: This area is often built as a clean workshop, which usually refers to the highest requirements for a sanitary environment, personnel, and environment, such as exposed processing areas for raw materials and finished products, cold processing rooms for food, cooling rooms for ready-to-eat food, storage rooms for ready-to-eat food to be packaged, and inner packaging rooms for ready-to-eat food.
Food factories with clean workshops should avoid pollution sources, cross-contamination, mixing, and errors to the greatest extent during site selection, design, layout, construction, and renovation.
The factory environment is clean and tidy, and the flow of people and logistics is reasonable.
There should be appropriate access control measures to prevent unauthorized entry.
Save the completion date of construction and construction.
Buildings with more serious air pollution during the production process should be built on the leeward side of the factory with the most wind direction all year round.
When production processes that affect each other are not suitable to be located in the same building, there should be effective partition measures between the respective production areas. A dedicated fermentation workshop should be provided for the production of fermented products.
03
Requirements for clean workshops
Processes that have sterility requirements but cannot be sterilized, and processes that can achieve final sterilization but require sterile operation after sterilization, should be carried out in clean workshops.
Clean workshops with good hygienic production environment requirements should include storage and processing places for the final cooling or packaging of perishable foods, ready-to-eat semi-finished products or finished products, places for pre-treatment of raw materials that cannot be sterilized, canning and molding of products, exposed environments after final sterilization of products, preparation areas for inner packaging materials and inner packaging rooms, as well as processing places and inspection rooms for food production, improvement of food characteristics or preservation, etc.
The production process of the workshop and the corresponding clean room grade requirements are reasonably laid out. The layout of the production line should not cause back-and-forth crossing and discontinuity.
The interconnected workshops in the production area should meet the needs of varieties and processes. If necessary, measures such as buffer rooms should be implemented to prevent cross-contamination. The area of the buffer room should not be less than 3 square meters.
Raw material pre-processing and finished product production should not be in the same clean area.
The production workshop shall set aside an area and space suitable for the production scale as a temporary storage area for materials, intermediate products, products to be tested, and finished products, and shall strictly prevent cross-contamination, confusion, and contamination.
The inspection room should be set up independently, and proper measures should be taken for its exhaust and drainage. If there is a requirement for air cleanliness in the inspection process of the product, a clean workbench should be set up.
04
Working principle of air purification system in clean workshop of food factory
Mode 1: The working principle of standard combined room air conditioning cabinet + air filtration system + clean room ventilation and insulation duct + HEPA high-efficiency air supply outlet + clean room return air duct system, which continuously circulates and replenishes fresh air to the clean room workshop to achieve the cleanliness required by the production environment.
Mode 2: The working principle of installing FFU industrial air purifier on the ceiling of the clean workshop to directly supply air to the clean room + return air column return air system + ceiling air conditioner refrigeration. This form is generally used on occasions where the environmental cleanliness requirements are not very high, and the cost is relatively low. Such as food production workshops, ordinary physical and chemical laboratory projects, product packaging rooms, cosmetics production workshops, etc.
The different designs of air supply and return air systems in clean workshops are the decisive factors for determining the different cleanliness levels of clean workshops.
National standards related to the construction of food clean workshops:
GB 50687-2011 Technical specifications for the construction of clean rooms in the food industry
GB 50591-2010 Clean room construction and acceptance specifications
GB 50073-2013 Clean workshop design specifications
GB 50243-2016 Ventilation and air conditioning engineering construction quality acceptance specifications
GB 50210-2018 Building decoration and renovation engineering quality acceptance standards
GB 50274-2010 Refrigeration equipment, air separation equipment installation engineering construction and acceptance specifications
GB 50325-2020 Civil construction engineering indoor environmental pollution control specifications
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